Dirty and dusky, but as wide as eye
Could reach, with here and there a sail just skipping
In sight, then lost amid the forestry
Of masts; a wilderness of steeples peeping
On tiptoe through their sea-coal canopy;
A huge dun cupola like a foolscap crown
On a fool's head--and there is London town!

Don Juan had got out on Shooters' Hill
Sunset the time, the place the same declivity
Which looks along that vale of good and ill
Where London streets ferment in full activity;
While everything around was calm and still
Except the creak of wheels which on their pivot he
Heard--and that bee-like, babbling, busy hum
Of cities, that boil over with their scum.


The prospect eastward across the broad valley of the Darent, if less
wonderful, is assuredly far lovelier than that north-westward over
London; but from the top of Shooters' Hill we probably do not follow
the actual route of the ancient way until we come to Welling. The
present road down the hill eastward is said to date from 1739 only.
[Footnote: See H. Littlehales, "Some Notes on the Road from Canterbury
in the Middle Ages" (Chaucer Society, 1898).]

There is nothing to keep us in Welling, nor indeed in Bexley Heath,
except to note that they are the first two Kentish villages upon our
route, now little more than suburban places spoiled of any virtue they
may have possessed. It is said that at Clapton Villa in the latter