the Sarah Ann, of Aylesford. Down drops
the huge tawny mainsail as she steers for the
middle arch, just above which I am standing,
leaning cross-armed upon the parapet : and
now, with all her wings close folded, she
shaves to a nicety the sides of the arch. She
is gone : but what is this rich odour she has
left behind ? Not spikenard nor olibanum
could be more grateful to my nostrils, than
that rich, balmy, healthful, bitter smell that
floats about me now, and makes this place no
common bridge of stone. The Sarah Ann
is freighted with Kentish hops : many a
precious pocket of that noble plant lies down
in the dark, beneath a yellow tarpauling
spread over her hatchway. But, like the
thoughts of a good man, who suffers
imprisonment for the whole world's sake, its
subtle essence steals abroad, and lives in the
free air.

Hops coming into my head in this manner,
remind me of the business of to-day: for
though I have the air of a veritable lounger,
and though the overtasked railway porter,
going to his work at this early hour, looked
at me enviously and thought I lead a nice
lazy life of it, I, too, have a task to accomplish.
The railway porter, if he knew
anything of signals off the line, might have known
that to be astir thus early does not mean
idling. I have a letter in my pocket for
Mr. Day, the hop-grower of East Farleigh,
charging him, in the sacred name of friendship,
to show and make clear to me everything
connected with the cultivation and
preparation of hops. So, after more loitering
on the bridge, and more sauntering in the
town (for I deem it well to let my mind lie
fallow a few hours, before receiving that
broadcast of facts with which it is to be sown),
I come to the bridge again, and cross the river
winding through the brown and yellow woods
up to East Farleigh.

There are in all England some fifty or sixty
thousand acres of hop plantations; and of
those one-half at least are in this county
alone. ln the oldest book I know about hops
(Reynolde Scot's "Perfite Platforme of a
Hoppe Garden "), dated 1574, and printed in
black letter, with many prefaces terminating
in inverted pyramids of type, Kent is spoken
of as the county of hops. The system of
cultivation appears to have little changed since
then; and the book, if it were not written in
the style of an Act of Parliament, and
interlarded with moral reflections and allusions to
every poet and orator of ancient times, might
have been written in the present day. Yet
hops, at that date, were but of recent cultivation.
For ages, while our ancestors were wont
to flavour their ale with ground ivy, and
honey, and various bitters, a weed called
"hop " had been known about the hedges of
England; but no one thought to cultivate it
for brewing until the beginning of the
sixteenth century. Some say the cultivated
plant came first from Flanders, where it
was certainly used before our brewers knew
its virtues. The Chinese, of course, are
supposed to have known all about it ages before
that. In France, hop gardens are very
ancient. Mention is made of them in some of
the oldest records, though what their hops
were used for does not appear. In England
it had many enemies to contend with at first.
Slanderers said it dried up the body and
increased melancholy ; and though the very
reverse is the fact, this belief so far prevailed,
that we find in the household regulations of
Henry the Eighth an order to the brewer not
to put any more hops in the beer : and at a
much later period, the Common Council of
the City of London petitioned Parliament
against the use of hops, "in regard that they
would spoil the taste of the drink, and endanger
the people."

There are not five parishes in Kent  — large
or small — that have so many acres of hops as
this little parish of East Farleigh, where I am
going. There is no place in all England
whose hops will fetch a better price — not
excepting Farnham, in Hampshire, whose
patch of hop plantation, standing almost
alone in the county, has slightly lost its
reputation as the queen of hop-gardens, since its
limits have been extended into a less favourable
soil. At East Farleigh dwelt the Rothschild
of hop-growers, whose hop-poles alone
were said to be worth seventy thousand pounds;
and there dwell his descendants still, though
their grounds are little more than a tithe of
his. The luxuriance of hops about here is a
puzzle to theoretical agriculturists. " Though
rich mould," says Bannister, " generally pro-
duces a larger growth of hops than other
soils, there is one exception to this rule, where
the growth is frequently eighteen or twenty
hundred per acre. This is the neighbourhood
of Maidstone, a kind of slaty ground
with an understratum of stone. There the
vines run up to the top of the longest poles,
and the increase is equal to the most fertile
soil of any kind."

Hops, in England, invariably grow up poles.
In the north of France they are sometimes
made to creep upon copper wires, ranged
horizontally, like the lines of the electric
telegraph; but Kentish farmers, when they hear
of it, shake their heads. These poles stand
in groups of three or four, at a distance of
about six or seven feet apart; and nearly
three thousand (worth about seventy-five
pounds) are required for an acre of ground,
In some counties, hops are set between fruit-
trees in orchards; and penny wise and pound
foolish growers will plant vegetables between
the poles; but Kentish growers know that
the hop requires all the strength of the soil,
and rigidly exclude everything that could
impoverish it, except in the first two years after
planting, when the bines never produce any
flowers worth picking. The only plant cultivated
is the female hop; the male species,
sometimes called "blind hop" being of no