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In the Eighteenth Century
side of the Pantiles, or public walk, so called because paved with pantiles; it is called so also, like the long room at Hampstead, because it would be difficult to distinguish it by any other name; for it has no beauty in itself, and borrows none from foreign aid, as it has only common houses at one side, and little millinery and Tunbridge-ware shops at the other, and at each end is choked up by buildings that intercept all prospect. How such a place could first be made a fashionable pleasure-walk, everybody must wonder. . . . Tunbridge Wells is a place that to me appeared very singular : the country is all rock, and every part of it is either up or down hill, scarce ten yards square being level ground in the whole place : the houses, too, are scattered about in a strange wild manner, and look as if they had been dropt where they stand by accident, for they form neither streets nor squares, but seem strewed promiscuously, except, indeed, where the shopkeepers live, who have got two or three dirty little lanes, much like dirty little lanes in other places." Miss Burney subsequently used her knowledge of the place to make it the background of some scenes in Camilla and The Wanderer. On Mount
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