After a long continuance of cold and cheerless weather, the morning of Saturday, the 26th of May, 1877, was bright and genial. An unclouded sun, and a warm south-western wind, awoke the birds to melody, and gave the flowers new fragrance. As the train bore me through pleasant Surrey, the fields not only smiled--they absolutely seemed to laugh with joy at the advent of the first day of summer, and when we stopped at the pretty station of plutocratic Surbiton, the air was laden with the perfume of lilacs and of hawthorn blossom. From a dense thicket, nearly overhead, came cheerfully the melodious notes of "the careful thrush," who, as Browning says--
"Sings his song thrice over, Lest I should think he never could recapture That first, fine, careless rapture."
As the train passes on, I see, beyond the silvery Thames, the stately front of Hampton Court Palace. A little further on we pass Esher, where, on a tree-girt hill, the lofty pediment of Claremont peeps through the trees, and reminds me that here, sixty years ago, the hopes of England were quenched by the death of the youthful Princess Charlotte. Strange, that this house should have been the death-place of the unthroned heiress of England, and, forty years afterwards, of the dethroned crafty old French king, Louis Philippe.
When we stop at Woking Common, I feel at home. Here, half-a-century ago, when there was not even a hut on the spot which is now a busy town, I used to play as a boy. Yonder is the Basingstoke canal, where, with willow wand and line of string from village shop, I used to beguile the credulous gudgeon and the greedy perch. Just up that lane to the right, on the road to Knap Hill--famed the world over for its hundreds of acres of rhododendrons--is the nurseryman's shed to which, in the summer, cart-loads of the small, wild, black cherries came from Normandy, for seed. Here the boys of the neighbourhood had the privilege of gorging themselves gratis with the luscious fruit, on the simple condition that they placed the cherry-stones in bowls provided for the purpose. As the train moves on, we dash through a deep cutting of yellow-coloured sand, and emerge upon a wild and dreary region. On the hills to the right are a gaol, a reformatory, and a lunatic asylum; and on the left is the "Necropolis," where London, in the black and sandy soil, deposits the myriads of its dead. All around, the ground is olive-coloured with unblossomed heath, bright and golden here and there with the flowerets of the prickly gorse. Dense and dismal plantations of black-looking Scotch firs are enlivened at intervals by the delicate and tender green spikelets of a sprouting larch. On we rush for miles through this sombre region, through dank morasses, and past dark and gloomy pools, from one of which a heron rises majestically. On, until, in a broad and airy region, the red coats of soldiers are seen dotted here and there amongst the heather. In the distance are the serried lines of the tents of Aldershot. Just beyond this point the train suddenly enters the chalk formation, and comes simultaneously into a cultivated district. A mile or two further, and the train stops at Farnham; birthplace of Toplady, who wrote the beautiful hymn, "Rock of Ages;" of William Cobbett, sturdiest of English yeomen; and of Charles Vince, who, coming to Birmingham an utter stranger, so endeared himself to its people, that he was universally beloved; and when he died, was followed to his grave by thousands of the principal inhabitants, amid the tearful regrets of the entire population.