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my sketch was made from one of the uppermost windows of the "Bull Inn" (the place where Charles Dickens once lived, and which he has immortalized in the pages of "Pickwick"), which is immediately opposite. A little higher up the street is a large vane, richly decorated in red and gold, on the Corn Exchange. An inscription its south-west face tells us that:

"This present building was erected at the sole charge and expense of Sir Cloudsley Shovel, Knight, A.D. 1706. He represented this city in three Parliaments in the reign of King William the Third, and in one Parliament in the reign of Queen Anne."

Maidstone, too, is rich in vanes. There is one specially you can see from all parts of the town. It is on the Medway Brewery, and represents an old brown jug and glass; its dimensions, to say the least of it, are somewhat startling. The jug alone (which is made of beaten copper plate) is 3ft. 6in. in height, and in its fullest part 3ft. in diameter, with a holding capacity of 108 gallons, or three barrels. The glass—also made of copper—is capable of holding some eight gallons. The vane revolves on ball bearings, its height above the roof is 12ft., its arms extend nearly 7ft., the whole, I am told, standing 80ft. from the ground.

On the observatory connected with the Maidstone Museum (which latter was once Chillington Manor House) is a modern vane, much discoloured by damp, but very apt in design; note the perforated sun, moon and stars, and the three wavy-looking pointers, which I take to represent rays of light. Mr. Frederick James, the courteous curator, called my attention to a singularly fine wrought-iron vane, now preserved in the Museum, about which but little is known, but which may possibly have surmounted the place in the olden days—when Chillington Manor was the seat of the great Cobham family.

Space forbids my more than just calling attention to the nondescript gilt monster, with its riveted wings and forked tongue and tail,