Descriptive letterpress printed opposite this photograph:

ON THE MOLE, BOX HILL.

“Among steep hills and woods embosom’d, flows

A copious stream, with boldly winding course;

Here traceable, there hidden; there again

To sight restored, and glitt’ring in the sun.”

FROM Buford Bridge this beautiful Surrey stream meanders through all that picturesque breadth of country which lies between Boxhill and Mickleham, until it expands its shallow breadth at Leatherhead. In this short distance it traverses some of the most enchanting scenery in the south of England: deep vales, shadowy woods, broad green meadows, and noble parks, bounded by the undulating lines of the lofty Surrey chalk-hills.

The Mole has been a favourite stream, alike with the old poets and modern painters.

Spenser calls it the “nousling Mole;” it is the “soft and gentle Mole” of Drayton, the “silent Mole” of Thomson; and it is the subject of a very large proportion of the water-colour drawings of Birket Foster and other painters of that school.

Close by the bridge stands the well-known ancient inn, which everyone should visit at least once in summer days. It is almost classic ground. Under its roof Keats wrote the latter part of his “Endymion” that poem commencing with the oft-quoted lines⎯

“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:

Its loveliness increases; it will never

Pass into nothingness.”

“I like the place very much,” he wrote; “there is a hill and dale, and a little river. I went up Box Hill this evening after the moon-‘you a’ seen the moon’-came down, and wrote some lines.” Possibly these:

“O Moon! the oldest shades ‘mong oldest trees

Feel palpitations when thou lookest in;

Thou dost bless everywhere, with silver lip

Kissing dead things to life.”

The old hostelry and its famous grounds have many other associations, and many others whose names are borne on the muster-roll of fame have at one time or another sought the pleasant retirement for which it was celebrated. Hazlitt has recorded the books he read under its apple-blossoms, and here Lord Nelson spent a few days of that brief interval of rest which preceded his last voyage and glorious victory at Trafalgar!