Among the greatest of the Lords Warden was William Pitt, who was here throughout the Napoleonic scare. The beautiful wooded park owes much of its charm to his niece, Lady Hester Stanhope, who kept house for her bachelor uncle, and in particular planted the fine Portugal laurels which are among its chief ornaments. Pitt’s own avenue of sycamores has grown to great nobility. Cobbett, who could pen the most wonderful descriptions of scenery and the most virulent personal abuse, describes in one of his “Rural Rides” how he came from Dover to Walmer and Deal, and handles Pitt pretty severely on the way. “I got to this place (Deal) about half an hour after the ringing of the eight o’clock bell, or curfew, which I heard at about two miles’ distance from the place.” This was the curfew, still rung nightly from the Norman church-tower of St. Margaret-at-Cliffe. From the town of Dover you come up the Castle Hill, and have a most beautiful view from the top of it. You have the sea, the chalk cliffs of Calais, the high land at Boulogne, the town of Dover just under you, the valley towards Folkestone and the much more beautiful valley towards Canterbury; and, going on a little farther, you have the Downs in full view, with a most beautiful corn country to ride along through. The corn was chiefly cut between Walmer and Dover. The barley almost all cut and tied up in sheaf. Nothing but the beans seemed to remain standing along here. They are not quite so good as the rest of the corn, but they are by no means bad. When I came to the village of Walmer, I inquired for the Castle-- that famous place, where Pitt, Dundas, Perceval, and all the whole tribe of plotters against the French Revolution had carried on their plots. After coming through the village of Walmer, you see the entrance to the Castle away to the right. It is situated pretty nearly on the water’s edge, and at the bottom of a little dell, about a furlong or so from the turnpike-road. This is now the habitation of our great Minister, Robert Bankes Jenkinson, son of Charles of that name. When I was told by a girl who was leasing in a field by the roadside that that was Walmer Castle, I stopped short, pulled my horse round, looked steadfastly at the gateway, and could not help exclaiming, ‘O! thou who inhabitest that famous dwelling! thou who hast always been in place, let who might be out of place! O thou everlasting placeman! thou sage of “over-production,” do but cast thine eyes upon this barleyfield’-- and so forth. [Illustration: ENTRANCE TO WALMER CASTLE.]