Let us beware lest, in making travel over the face of our England easy, we deprive it of half its charm. After Billericay our next point is Horndon on the Hill, concerning the view from which "over the rich land of Essex and along the Thames" "Murray" speaks. The view from Horndon is not, however, to be compared with that from Langdon Hill, climbed six miles to the south of Billericay, which is 385 ft. high against the 128 of Horndon. It was of this hill, doubtless, that Arthur Young raved in the annexed passage: "I forgot to tell you," he wrote from the "King's Head," Tilbury, on 24 June, 1767, "that near _Horndon_, on the summit of a vast hill, one of the most astonishing prospects to be beheld, breaks almost at once upon one of the dark lanes. Such a prodigious valley, everywhere painted with the finest verdure, and intersected with numberless hedges and woods, appears beneath you, that it is past description; the _Thames_ winding through it, full of ships, and bounded by the hills of _Kent_. Nothing can exceed it, unless that which _Hannibal_ exhibited to his disconsolate troops, when he bade them behold the glories of the _Italian_ plains! If ever a turnpike should lead through this country, I beg you will go and view this enchanting scene, though a journey of forty miles is necessary first. I never beheld anything equal to it in the West of _England_, that region of landscape." Some hyperbole there is here, perhaps, but not much of it, for the view of land and sea is very fine and, best of all, it is hardly necessary to have the car in order to secure it. The difference between the aspect of the river, as it presents itself to us, and that which it presented to Arthur Young is all to our disadvantage. For him an out-going ship was always a sailing vessel; for us the sailing vessels are few and far between, and those of large size which still use the Thames must needs rely on a fussy, black-smoked tug to tow them down the tortuous channel. Our many steamers are not so picturesque in themselves as the tall ships making for the open sea of his day were, when the wind was favourable. Our steamers, too, belch forth clouds of smoke, befouling the air and obscuring the landscape. Still, as J. M. W. Turner and others, but Turner most of all, have proved to us, there is a weird beauty of smoke if we will but open our eyes to see it, and the Rochester barges, floating low on the water and carrying their delicious brown sails, were of Young's days no less than they are of ours. Father Thames from a height is still a sight for appreciative eyes.