There are no “shepherds” here, on the Marsh. They are, in local parlance, “lookers.” When the agricultural labourer in these parts takes up with “ship,” he announces, “I be a-going a-lookering”; lookering being, in fact, a variety of shepherding peculiar to these surroundings, with special terms and conditions. To trace these byways of the Marsh in spring, say in the third week of May, when the thorn-trees are in bloom, is an experience to be remembered; it is the best time of all the year to see Romney Marsh. Then such remote spots as Ivychurch, in the very middle of it, seem idyllic. “Ivychurch” does not, by the way, take its name, as might be supposed, from ivy, but has its root in “ea,” for water, having originally been situated on an islanded knoll ever so little raised above the level of the wet marshes. The term “Marsh,” it should be said, survives although the roads and byways are now as dry as those of other scenes, thanks to the constant care of the jurats and other officers whose functions are to keep the dykes deeply delved, the sluices in order, and Dymchurch Wall in repair. In default of these, Romney Marsh, or the greater portion of it, would again be drowned, for it is at a lower level than the sea. CHAPTER XXIV NEW ROMNEY--SMUGGLING DAYS--BROOKLAND--FAIRFIELD--SMALLHYTHE The town of New Romney, new nine hundred years ago, is located afar off, not by its houses, which are few indeed, but by the trees that encircle it, and give a very direct denial to its urban claims. Founded to replace Old Romney, deserted by the sea, as a seaport, the sea began again to retreat so long ago as Queen Elizabeth’s time, and is now a mile and a half to two miles distant, at the melancholy and hopeless-looking cluster of houses known as Littlestone-on-Sea, where there are golf-links on which Parliamentary matches are played. There the opposing champions in the House of Commons contend amicably, much to the surprise of the general public, who imagine--poor fools--that all the fury and tub-thumping at Westminster is honest emotion, and do not realise that it is all part of the great Game of Make-Believe for which, whether amused or not, we have all to pay. There were once no fewer than five churches at New Romney. Now there is but one. “Here,” wrote Cobbett, in 1825, “there is a church (two miles only from the last, mind!) fit to contain one thousand five hundred people, and there are, for the people of this parish to live in, twenty-two or twenty-three houses! And yet the _vagabonds_ have the impudence to tell us that the population of England has vastly increased.” [Illustration: NEW ROMNEY CHURCH.]