Crotchet Castle

In one of those beautiful valleys, through which the Thames not yet polluted by the tide, the scouring of cities, or even the minor defilement of the sandy streams of Surrey rolls a clear flood through flowery meadows, under the shade of old beech woods, and the smooth mossy greensward of the chalk hills which pour into it their tributary rivulets, as pure and pellucid as the fountain of Bandusium, or the wells of Scamander, by which the wives and daughters of the Trojans washed their splendid garments in the days of peace, before the coming of the Greeks...