"
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.
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