The Project Gutenberg eBook, England, by Frank Fox This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: England Author: Frank Fox Release Date: February 7, 2012 [eBook #38790] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENGLAND*** E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Josephine Paolucci, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) Cover ST. PAUL'S FROM THE RIVER THAMES ST. PAUL'S FROM THE RIVER THAMES ENGLAND BY FRANK FOX AUTHOR OF "RAMPARTS OF EMPIRE" "PEEPS AT THE BRITISH EMPIRE," "AUSTRALIA AND OCEANIA" WITH 32 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR LONDON ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK 1914 AUTHOR'S PREFACE To bring within the limits of one volume any detailed description of England—her history, people, landscapes, cities— would be impossible. I have sought in this book to give an impression of some of the most "English" features of the land, devoting a little space first to an attempt to explain the origins of the English people. Thus the English fields and flowers and trees, the English homes and schools are given far more attention than English cities, English manufactures; for they are more peculiar to the land and the people. More markedly than in any superiority of her material greatness England stands apart from the rest of the world as the land of green trees and meadows, the land of noble schools and of sweet homes: [Pg v] [Pg vi] Green fields of England! wheresoe'er Across this watery waste we fare, One image at our hearts we bear, Green fields of England, everywhere. Sweet eyes in England, I must flee Past where the waves' last confines be, Ere your loved smile I cease to see, Sweet eyes in England, dear to me! Dear home in England, safe and fast, If but in thee my lot lie cast, The past shall seem a nothing past To thee, dear home, if won at last; Dear Home in England, won at last. That is the cry of an Englishman (Arthur Hugh Clough). On the same note—the green fields, the dear homes—a sympathetic visitor to England would shape his impressions on going away. If, by chance, the reading of this book should whet the appetite for more about England, or some particular part of the kingdom, there are available in the same series very many volumes on different counties and different features of England. To these I would refer the lover or student of England wishing for closer details. My impression is necessarily a general one; and it is that of a visitor from one of the overseas Dominions—not the less interesting, I hope, certainly not the less sympathetic for that reason. FRANK FOX. CONTENTS CHAPTER I The Making of England—The Britons and the Romans CHAPTER II The Making of England—The Anglo-saxons and the Normans CHAPTER III The English Landscape and the English Love of it CHAPTER IV The Training of Young England CHAPTER V England at Work CHAPTER VI England at Play CHAPTER VII The Cities of England [Pg vii] [Pg ix] PAGE 1 16 28 43 64 [Pg x] 81 101 CHAPTER VIII The Rivers of England CHAPTER IX England's Shrines CHAPTER X The Poorer Population CHAPTER XI The Arts in England CHAPTER XII Political Life in England CHAPTER XIII The Defence of England INDEX LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 1. St. Paul's from the River Thames 2. The Chalk Cliffs of England 3. North Side, Canterbury Cathedral 4. Richmond, Yorkshire 5. Norman Staircase, King's School, Canterbury 6. A Kent Manor-House and Garden 7. A Sussex Village 8. The Bridge of Sighs, St. John's College, Cambridge 9. St. Magdalen Tower and College, Oxford 10. Broad Street, Oxford, looking West 11. Eton Upper School 12. Houses of Parliament and Westminster Bridge, London 13. Harvesting in Herefordshire 114 125 137 155 171 187 203 [Pg xi] Frontispiece FACING PAGE 1 8 17 24 33 40 49 56 59 62 65 72 81 14. Football at Rugby School 15. Cricket at "Lord's" 16. Trout-fishing on the Itchen, Hampshire 17. Dean's Yard, Westminster 18. Sailing Boats on the Serpentine, Hyde Park, London 19. Watergate Street, Chester 20. The River Rother, Sussex 21. Thames at Richmond, Surrey 22. Spring by the Thames 23. Windsor Castle from Fellows' Eyot: Early Spring 24. Glastonbury Abbey, Somersetshire 25. Anne Hathaway's Cottage near Stratford-on-Avon 26. Gipsies on a Gloucestershire Common 27. The Tower from the Tower Bridge, looking West 28. Westminster Abbey from the end of the Embankment 29. Westminster and the Houses of Parliament 30. Hyde Park, London 31. Battleships Manœuvring 32. Changing the Guard 81 88 97 104 [Pg xii] 107 110 115 118 121 124 128 137 144 153 160 169 176 193 200 THE CHALK CLIFFS OF ENGLAND—THE NEEDLES, ISLE OF WIGHT ENGLAND CHAPTER I THE MAKING OF ENGLAND—THE BRITONS AND THE ROMANS When Europe, as it shows on the map to-day, was in the making, some great force of Nature cut the British Islands off from the mainland. Perhaps it was the result of a convulsive spasm as Mother Earth took a new wrinkle on her face. Perhaps it was the steady biting of the Gulf Stream eating away at chalk cliffs and shingle beds. Whatever the cause, as far back as man knows the English Channel ran between the mainland of Europe and "a group of islands off the coast of France"; and the chalk cliffs of the greatest of these islands faced the newcomer to suggest to the Romans the name of Terra Alba: perhaps to prompt in some admirer of Horace among them a prophetic fancy that this white land was to make a "white mark" in the Calendar of History. Considered geographically, the British Islands, taking the sum of the whole five thousand or so of them (counting islets), are of slight importance. Yet a map of the world showing the possessions of Great Britain—the area over which the people of these islands have spread their sway—shows a whole continent, large areas of three other continents, and numberless islands to be British. And when the astonishing disproportion between the British Islands and the British Empire has been grasped, it can be made the more astonishing by reducing the British Islands down to England as the actual centre from which all this greatness has radiated. It is true that the British Empire is the work of the British people: as the Roman Empire was of the Italian people and not of Rome alone. But it was in England that it had its foundation; and the English people made a start with the British Empire by subduing or coaxing to their domain the Welsh, the Scottish, and the Irish. Not to England all the glory: but certainly to England the first glory. There is at this day a justified resentment shown by Scots and Irish, not to speak of Welshmen, when "England" is used [Pg 1] [Pg 2] [Pg 3] as a term to embrace the whole of the British Isles. (Similarly Canadians resent the term "America" being arrogated by the United States.) A French wit has put very neatly the case for that resentment by stating that ordinarily an inhabitant of the British Isles is a British citizen until he does something disgraceful, when he is identified in the English newspapers as a "Scottish murderer" or an "Irish thief": but if he does something fine then he is "a gallant Englishman." That is neat satire, founded on a slight foundation of truth. Very often "England" is confounded with "Great Britain" when there is discussion of Imperial greatness. I do not want to come under suspicion of inexactness, which that confusion of terms shows. But writing of England, and England alone, it is just to claim at the outset that the actual first beginning of that great British power which has eclipsed all records of the world was in England: and it is worth the while to inquire into the causes which made for the growth of that power. It is necessary, indeed, to make that inquiry and get to know something of English history before attempting to look with an understanding eye upon English landscapes, English cities, and the English people of to-day. The classic painters of the greatest age of Art used landscape only as the background for portraiture. The human interest to them was always paramount. And, whether one may or may not go the whole way with these painters in the appraisement of the relative value of the human or the natural, clear it is that a human interest heightens the value of every scene; and there can be no full appreciation of a country without a knowledge of its history. "When a noble act is done—perchance in a scene of great natural beauty: when Leonidas and his three hundred martyrs consume one day in dying, and the sun and the moon come each and look upon them once in the steep defile of Thermopylæ: when Arnold Winkelried, in the high Alps, under the shadow of the avalanche, gathers in his side a sheaf of Austrian spears to break the line for his comrades; are not these heroes entitled to add the beauty of the scene to the beauty of the deed?" Assuredly "yes" to that question from Emerson, and assuredly, too, they pay back every day what they have borrowed, giving to a noble landscape the added charm of its human association with a noble deed. The white cliffs of England are beautiful and impressive as they show like gleaming ramparts defending green fields and fruitful valleys. But they become more beautiful and more impressive as one thinks of them confronting the Romans stepping from Gaul to a wider conquest; or facing William of Normandy as he set out to enforce a weak claim with a strong sword; or set like white defiant teeth at the great ships of the Spanish Armada as they passed up the English Channel with Drake in pursuit, the unwieldy Spanish galleons showing like bulls pursued by gadflies. Let us then look for a moment at England in the making before considering the England of to-day. When the British Isles were cut off from the mainland, England was, without doubt, inhabited by people akin to the Gauls. The people of the French province of Brittany are to-day very clearly cousins of the people of those districts of England, such as Cornwall, which preserve most of the old Briton blood. Separation from the mainland does not seem to have effected very much change in the national type by the time that history came on the scene to make her records. Cæsar found the Britons very like the Gauls. They had not developed into a maritime people. Fisheries they had, for food and for pearls; but they had none of the piratical adventurousness of the Norsemen. That they were naked, woad- painted savages, those Britons of Cæsar's time, has been held long as a popular belief. But that is hardly tenable in the light of the knowledge which recent archæological investigation has given, though, likely enough, they painted for battle, as soldiers of a later time used to wear plumes and glittering uniforms to impress and frighten the enemy. Excavations in more than one district of late have shown that the early Britons possessed a good share of civilisation before ever the Romans came to their land. Thus near Northampton there is a place which used to be a camp of the Britons prior to the Roman occupation. The camp has an area of about four acres, and was defended by a ditch fifteen feet deep, and about thirty feet wide, with a rampart on either side of the fosse. Here were discovered the bases of what are considered to have been the remains of the hut-dwellings of the occupiers of the camp. Of these some three hundred were found filled with black earth and mould, and from them many most interesting articles were obtained. There were many iron relics, such as swords, daggers, spear heads, knives, saws, sickles, adzes, an axe, plough-shares, nails, chisels, gouges, bridles (one with a bronze centre-bit), and a well-formed pot-hook made of twisted iron. In bronze there were remains of two sword scabbards, four brooches, some fragments belonging to horse harness, pins and rings, and a small spoon. There were also glass beads and rings, a fragment of jet, a number of spindle whorls for spinning, bone combs used in weaving, and about twenty triangular-shaped bricks pierced through each corner, considered to be loom weights to keep the warp taut; more than a hundred querns or millstones, some of the corn which was ground in them (this fortunately happened to be charred and so preserved), and remains of about four hundred pots, nearly all used for domestic purposes. One of the bronze scabbards bears on the top an engraved pattern of the decorative art of the period, showing the Triskele, a sun symbol often found on remains of the Bronze Age in Denmark as well as elsewhere. Similar pre-Roman relics have been obtained from the Marsh Village near Glastonbury, from Mount Coburn near Lewes, and from near Canterbury. The unmistakable evidence of these relics is that the pre-Roman Briton could spin and weave, knew how to plough and when to sow, was an excellent carpenter, and was an expert in metal work, both in iron and bronze, and possessed a decorative art. He was therefore not a "savage" as savages were understood in those days. We must consider the Britons, then, of Cæsar's time as possessed of some degree of civilisation. They understood fabrics, pottery, metals, architecture. They had come into contact with the civilisation of the Mediterranean Sea long before his day. The Scilly Islands off the coast of Cornwall can reasonably be identified as the Casserterrides of the Phœnicians, where the merchants of Tyre and Sidon bought tin, giving cloth in exchange. It is said, indeed, that an ingot [Pg 4] [Pg 5] [Pg 6] [Pg 7] [Pg 8] of tin with a Phœnician mark upon it was dredged up once from Falmouth Harbour. Probably the very earliest mention of Britain is by Hecatæus (b.c. 500, about the time when Marathon was fought). He described Britain then as an isle of the Hyperboreans, and alleged that the inhabitants "raised two crops in the year and worshipped the sun." NORTH SIDE, CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL NORTH SIDE, CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL That may be the first original sneer at the British climate, the sneer which now takes the form that whenever the sun appears in England it is photographed, lest the inhabitants of the island should forget what it is like. (There is an Australian "drought" story of the same order of humorous exaggeration, that in a certain district the rain from heaven had been withheld so long, and grass had so long disappeared, that when at last relief came and the grass grew the sheep would not eat it, as they did not recognise what it was!) But perhaps Hecatæus was serious. It is not at all unlikely that the gossip Hecatæus had of the Isle of the Hyperboreans came from Phœnician sources, and referred to that south- westerly extremity of Cornwall which gets the full benefit of the warm Gulf Stream, and has in consequence an astonishingly mild climate for its latitude, a climate quite capable of producing sometimes two crops a year. As for sun worship, there are many indications of the practice of its rites in prehistoric Britain. The "Round Towers" which are sprinkled over Ireland can best be explained by a theory of sun worship. Stonehenge, in the south of England, which dates back to about 1500 years b.c., was probably a temple of sun worship. There are the ruins of a temple, possibly of the sun, at Avebury (Wilts.) of even older date. It would be impossible to attempt even to hint at all the evidence in the matter. But what may be accepted quite safely as a fact is, that in prehistoric times the Briton was no laggard in the path of civilisation: that indeed he was among the early pilgrims on that path. Even as far north as the Yorkshire Wolds—it is clear from recent excavations—there was a thick local population of men in the Neolithic Age. The burial mounds of these Neolithic tribes have lately been excavated, and have given much valuable evidence as to the history of Man. The "Ipswich Man," too—the indubitable remains of a man who walked upright and who had skull accommodation for a human brain, discovered in strata of a most remote age of the earth—proves that in the little corner of the world which was to have such a wonderful history in the far future, there were early indications of promise. It is worth while to clear our British ancestors of the reproach of being woad-painted savages at a time of the world's history when every European, almost, had learned at least the use of skins. For those Britons were responsible for that "Celtic fringe" which to-day shows so largely in our poetry and our politics, and in other walks of life. The ancient Briton enters into the making of modern England through the strong traces of his ancestry left in Cornwall, Devon, the Marches of Wales, and elsewhere. But respectably clothed, arm-bearing, house-building personage as he was, the ancient Briton would never have made a very great mark in the world if he had been left to himself. He would never have overflowed to send out tidal waves of conquest like the Norsemen or the Goths. Possibly even in those early days he had his Celtic qualities of poetry and imagination and argumentativeness, and spent much of his energy in dreaming things instead of doing things. It was when the Romans came that England began to shape towards a big place in the world. The Romans do not seem to have had a very bloody campaign in subduing that part of Britain which is now England. The people were rather softer than the Gauls of the mainland. Their country was penetrated by several rivers such as the Thames, which gave easy highways to the Roman galleys. The gentle contours of the country made easy the building of the Roman roads, which were the chief agents of Roman civilisation. But the Roman dominion in the British Islands [Pg 9] [Pg 10] [Pg 11] [Pg 12] stopped with England. Scotland, Wales, Ireland remained unsubdued. That fact was to have an important bearing on the future of England. Step by step, Fate was working for the making of the people who were to cover the whole earth with their dominions. We have seen that in the beginning Britain was a part of Gaul, a temperate and fertile peninsula which by right of latitude should have had the temperature of Labrador, but which, because of the Gulf Stream, enjoyed a climate singularly mild and promotive of fertility. When the separation from the mainland came because of the cutting of the English Channel, the Gallic tribes left in Britain began to acquire, as the fruits of their soft environment and their insular position, an exclusive patriotism and a comparative immunity from invasion. These made the Briton at once very proud of his country and not very fitted to defend its shores. With the Roman invasion the future English race won a benefit from both those causes. The comparative ease of the conquest by the Roman Power freed the ensuing settlement by the conquerors from a good deal of the bitterness which would have followed a desperate resistance. The Romans were generous winners and good colonists. Once their power was established firmly, they treated a subject race with kindly consideration. Soon, too, the local pride of the Britons affected their victors. The Roman garrison came to take an interest in their new home, an interest which was aided by the singular beauty and fertility of the country. It was not long before Carausius, a Roman general in Britain, had set himself up as independent of Italy, and with the aid of sea-power he maintained his position for some years. The Romans and the Britons, too, freely intermarried, and at the time when the failing power of the Empire compelled the withdrawal of the Roman garrison, the south of Britain was as much Romanised as, say, northern Africa or Spain. All the appurtenances of Roman civilisation had been brought to Britain. It was no mere barbarous province. It had its great watering-places such as Bath, and its fine cities and its vineyards, though the British climate nowadays is accused of not being able to grow grapes. British oysters, too, were famous among the gluttons of Rome, and one Roman emperor is said to have raised a British oyster to the rank of consul as a mark of his appreciation. (This jest of the table, if all stories can be credited, has since been repeated in England, and is responsible for the "Sir Loin" of beef and also the "Baron" of beef.) But side by side with the growth of a gracious civilisation in England, there was constant warfare on the borders. The wilder natives of the British islands refused the Roman sway, and threatened by their forays the security of the new cities. This made necessary a great military organisation, which has left its mark on the England of to-day in the Roman roads and the sites of Roman military camps dotted all over the country from the Thames to the Tweed. The remains of these camps are quite distinguishable in many places; and generally they are known as "Cæsar's camps," whether Julius Cæsar ever saw their neighbourhood or not. Probably Carausius was the "Cæsar" of many of these camps. Despite the border wars the Romanised Britons got on fairly comfortably until the failing power of the Roman Empire made it necessary for the Roman legions to withdraw to Italy. This left Romanised Britain to be attacked by the wilder Britons of the north and the west. That these attacks should have been as successful as they were, hints that the south Briton of England was rather a soft fellow. Since, as we will find later, the Anglo-Saxon—once comfortably settled in England—showed a tendency also to become a soft fellow, and had to be pricked to greatness by the Dane and the Norman, it would almost seem that this gentle, green, cloudy England has ultimately a softening effect on its inhabitants. But fresh blood pours in to bring vigour. England invites adventurers by her beauty and then tames them. Because of her perpetual invitation the British nation has been made of a brew of Briton, Roman, Anglo-Saxon, Danish, and Norman bloods, and all these people have left their mark on the landscape of the country. CHAPTER II THE MAKING OF ENGLAND—THE ANGLO-SAXONS AND THE NORMANS How the Romanised Briton of England would have fared ultimately in his contest with the more savage Britons of the north and the west, who came to rob him down to his toga, if they had been left to fight it out, it is hard to say. Probably the course of events would have been that the English natives would first have yielded to the northern invaders, and afterwards absorbed them and made them partakers in their civilisation. [Pg 13] [Pg 14] [Pg 15] [Pg 16] RICHMOND, YORKSHIRE A town of considerable importance at the time of the Norman Conquest RICHMOND, YORKSHIRE A town of considerable importance at the time of the Norman Conquest But the issue was never fought out. There had begun the most momentous swarming of a human race that history records. Along the Scandinavian and the Danish peninsulas, and the northern coast of Germany, there had been swelling up a vast population of fierce, strong, courageous and hungry men; Angles, Saxons, Danes, Jutes, Norsemen—they were all very much akin: big blue-eyed men of mighty daring mated with fair, chaste, fruitful women; and they swarmed out of their warrens to over-run the greater part of Europe. You may trace them to the interior of Russia, to Iceland, to Constantinople, some think to North America. But, whatever their path, the British Islands were athwart the track they took, and the British Islands received the most complete flood of Anglo-Saxon blood. Again it was England that made way most easily to the invader. The Anglo-Saxons came and cleared out the Romanised and Christian civilisation from Yorkshire to Kent. But the fiercer British natives who had held back the Romans, held back also these new invaders, helped thereto by the fact that their lands seemed to be hungry, and to offer but little booty. England, fat, fertile, like a beautiful park with its forests and meadows and rivers, was at once a richer and an easier prize. The Anglo-Saxon probably made his conquest more easy by treachery and by fomenting discord among the Britons. There is a ballad by Thomas Love Peacock, which treats of such an Anglo-Saxon victory—with at least a shadow of a shade of historical warrant:— "Come to the feast of wine and meat," Spake the dark dweller of the sea. "There shall the hours in mirth proceed; There neither sword nor shield shall be." None but the noblest of the land, The flower of Britain's chiefs were there; Unarmed, amid the Saxon band They sate, the fatal feast to share. Three hundred chiefs, three score and three Went, where the festal torches burned Before the dweller of the sea; They went, and three alone returned. Till dawn the pale sweet mead they quaffed, The ocean chief unclosed his vest, His hand was on his dagger's haft, And daggers glared at every breast. Still it was an easy victory, that of Anglo-Saxon over Briton. But just as we must, in the light of recent knowledge, give up the idea that the Briton whom Julius Cæsar encountered was a woad-painted savage, so we must refuse to accept the impression (which is implied more often than directly stated) that the Romanised Briton, after the departure of the Roman legions, was quite helpless. Between the Roman departure from Britain and the establishment of the Anglo- Saxon kingdoms there, room must be found, somehow, for whatever of historical truth there is as a foundation for the Arthurian legends. On that point let old Caxton speak:— [Pg 17] [Pg 18] [Pg 19] Now it is notoriously known through the universal world that there be nine worthy and the best that ever were. That is to wit three paynims, three Jews, and three Christian men. As for the paynims they were tofore the Incarnation of Christ, which were named, the first Hector of Troy, of whom the history is come both in ballad and in prose; the second Alexander the Great; and the third Julius Cæsar, Emperor of Rome, of whom the histories be well-known and had. And as for the three Jews which also were tofore the Incarnation of our Lord, of whom the first was Duke Joshua which brought the children of Israel into the land of behest; the second David, King of Jerusalem; and the third Judas Maccabæus; of these three the Bible rehearseth all their noble histories and acts. And sith the said Incarnation have been three noble Christian men stalled and admitted through the universal world into the number of the nine best and worthy, of whom was first the noble Arthur, whose noble acts I purpose to write in this present book here following. The second was Charlemagne or Charles the Great, of whom the history is had in many places both in French and English; and the third and last was Godfrey of Bouillon, of whose acts and life I made a book unto the excellent prince and king of noble memory, King Edward the Fourth. The said noble gentleman instantly required me to imprint the history of the said noble king and conqueror, King Arthur, and of his knights, with the history of the Sangreal, and of the death and ending of the said Arthur; affirming that I ought rather to imprint his acts and noble feats, than of Godfrey of Bouillon, or any of the other eight, considering that he was a man born within this realm, and king and emperor of the same; and that there be in French divers and many noble volumes of his acts, and also of his knights. To whom I answered, that divers men hold opinion that there was no such Arthur, and that all such books as be made of him be but feigned and fables, by cause that some chronicles make of him no mention nor remember him no thing, nor of his knights. Whereunto they answered, and one in special said, that in him that should say or think that there was never such a king called Arthur, might well be credited great folly and blindness; for he said that there were many evidences of the contrary: first ye may see his sepulture in the Monastery of Glastonbury. And also in Polichronicon, in the fifth book of the sixth chapter, and in the seventh book and the twenty-third chapter, where his body was buried and after found and translated into the said monastery. Ye shall see also in the history of Bochas, in his book De Casu Principum, part of his noble acts, and also of his fall. Also Galfridus in his British book recounteth his life; and in divers places of England many remembrances be yet of him and shall remain perpetually, and also of his knights. First in the Abbey of Westminster, at Saint Edward's shrine, remaineth the print of his seal in red wax closed in beryl, in which is written Patricius Arthurus, Britannæ, Gallie, Germanie, Dacie, Imperator. Item in the castle of Dover ye may see Gawaine's skull and Craddock's mantle, at Winchester the Round Table, in other places Launcelot's sword and many other things. Then all these things considered, there can no man reasonably gainsay but there was a king of this land named Arthur. For in all places, Christian and heathen, he is reputed and taken for one of the nine worthy, and the first of the three Christian men. And also he is more spoken of beyond the sea, more books made of his noble acts than there be in England, as well in Dutch, Italian, Spanish, and Greek, as in French. And yet of record remain in witness of him in Wales, in the town of Camelot, the great stones and marvellous works of iron, lying under the ground, and royal vaults, which divers now living hath seen. I fear one cannot take Caxton's endorsement of Sir Thomas Malory as final evidence, and accept as historic a King Arthur who on one occasion invaded the European Continent and defeated in battle the troops of the Roman Emperor. But there were men to fight in England after the Romans left; and those beaten in the fight fell back on Scotland, on Wales, on Cornwall, and some of them wandered farther afield and colonised Brittany in France, a province which to- day reminds of Cornwall at a thousand points. The Anglo-Saxons, like other nations, found the air of England civilising. They aspired to settle down in quiet comfort when there came from the east a fresh cloud of freebooters, the Danes, to claim a share in this delectable island. Dane and Saxon fought it out—the Briton from "the Celtic fringe" occasionally interfering—with all the hearty ill-will of blood relations, and as they fought shaped out a very good people, partly English, partly Saxon, partly Danish, and in the mountains partly British. If you look over England with a seeing eye, you can notice the traces of each element in the nation's blood; and the landscape will partly explain why in one place there is a Celtic predominance, in another a Danish. Each national type sought and held the districts most suitable to its character. After the Danish, the last great element in the making of the British race was the Norman. The Normans were not so much aliens as might be supposed. The Anglo-Saxons of the day were descendants of sea-pirates who had settled in Britain and mingled their blood with the British. The Normans were descendants of kindred sea-pirates who had settled in Gaul, and mingled their blood with that of the Gauls and Franks. The two races, Anglo-Saxon and Normans, after a while merged amicably enough, the Anglo-Saxon blood predominating, and the present British type was evolved, in part Celtic, in part Danish, in part Anglo-Saxon, in part Norman—a hard-fighting, stubborn, adventurous type, which in [Pg 20] [Pg 21] [Pg 22] [Pg 23] its making from such varied elements had learned the value of compromise, and of the common-sense principle of give- and-take. The Normans brought to England a higher knowledge of the arts than the Anglo-Saxons had. The Roman culture of Britain had been just as high as the Roman culture of Gaul. But in Britain its tradition had been lost to a great extent in the onrush of the rude, unlettered Anglo-Saxons. In Gaul the Norsemen had won only a district, not the whole country, and they had been surrounded by civilising influences and had reacted to them wonderfully. Practically all the fine buildings of England date from after the Norman Epoch. But it is a fact which will strike at once the student of those buildings, who afterwards compares them with contemporary Norman buildings in France, that Norman architecture was not transplanted to England. Whilst at Rouen, Lisieux, Caen, Bayeux, you see the churches usually in Flamboyant or Ogival Gothic; in England the churches of about the same date are in a more severe and straight-laced style. It is well worth the trouble to study somewhat closely the churches built by the Normans in France and by the Norman-English in England during the century after the Conquest. A clear indication will be found from the study that the Normans did not over-run and beat down the Anglo-Saxons; but that the Anglo-Saxon was the "predominant partner" almost from the first in the domestic economy of the nation, however badly he fared in the tented field against the Normans. The antiquities of England, the edifices of England, the very fields of England will be understood better if they are looked at in the light of English history—not that bare-bones caricature of history which is a mere record of battles and kings, but the living history which traces to their sources the streams of our race. The England of to-day is beginning to know the wisdom of a close sympathetic study of the past. One of the signs of this awakening of the historical sense is the popularity of the open-air pageant reviving scenes of old. I shall always remember, among many of those pageants, a particularly fine one at Chester, a city of great historic importance. NORMAN STAIRCASE, KING'S SCHOOL, CANTERBURY NORMAN STAIRCASE, KING'S SCHOOL, CANTERBURY Such brilliant sunshine as rarely glows over "green and cloudy England" greeted this Chester Pageant; and, with it, just enough of a gentle breeze as to set all the leaves to a morris dance and to give to banner and mantle a flowing line. The scene for the play was set by Nature, or by good gardeners of long ago working in close sympathy with her model for an English pleasaunce. It was a very dainty sward, perhaps of five acres in all, ringed around with trees and bushes in their native wildness, which invaded here and there the grass with an out-thrown clump or extended arm. On such a spot fairies would pitch for their revels, noticing how the curtains of the shrubberies would mask their troopings, and the extending wings of boscage give surprise to their exits and entrances. With perfect weather and a perfect stage, the Chester Pageant needed to claim a large excellence to prove itself worthy of its opportunity; and did make and fully establish the claim. [Pg 24] [Pg 25] It was bright, graced with fine music and much dainty dancing, engrossing in its story, and amusing in the little character sketches of life with which it embroidered history. Also it taught patriotism by impressing proud facts of history. Where, to serve the purpose of the picturesque, the probable rather than the certain was followed, due warning was given; and the wise plan was adopted of interspersing with the great incidents pages from the familiar life of the people. The Crusade was preached from Chester Cross; side by side with it was shown an excerpt from cottage life in the story of Dickon, an archer, and his betrothed, Alison, whom he would leave, and yet not leave, to take the badge of the Crusade. History was, in fact, made homely, as history should be if it is to claim interest outside the philosopher's study. Chester is very proud of its history and jealously preserves its antiquities. A city which was a great camp for the Romans, a naval headquarters for the Saxons, a centre for the fierce contests between Normans and Welsh, a much- disputed prize in the Civil War, has certainly much history to cherish, and Chester nobly indulges the pride. No other city of England, not even excepting London, shows so much reverence for a glorious past. But all through England there is an awakening of historical interest; and it marches on the right lines to make history not so much a record of dead people as an explanation of living people. After this short glance at the past let us look to the England of to-day. CHAPTER III THE ENGLISH LANDSCAPE AND THE ENGLISH LOVE OF IT There are as many types of natural scenery in England almost as there are counties. To attempt to describe all in this one volume would be absurd. Yet to generalise on English natural beauty is difficult, because of that great diversity. Who can suggest, for instance, a common denominator to suit the Devonshire Moors, the Norfolk Broads, the Surrey Downs, and the Thames Valley? But since one must generalise, it is safe to give as the predominant feature of England's natural beauty that which strikes most obviously the eye of the stranger used to other countries. Nine out of ten strangers coming to England for the first time, and asked to speak of its appearance, will say something equivalent to "park-like." England in truth looks like one great well-ordered park, under the charge of a skilful landscape gardener. The trees seem to grow with an eye to effect, the meadows to be designed for vistas, the hedges for reliefs. The land indeed does not seem ever to be doing anything—not at all a correct impression in fact, that, but it is the one conveyed irresistibly. One soon notices that the tree must in France work for its living. It cannot aspire to the luxurious and beautiful existence of its English brothers, who in their woods and copses have little to do but to "utter green leaves joyously" in the spring, glow with burnished glory in the autumn, and unrobe delicate traceries for admiration in the winter. In France a tree may live on the edge of a road or as one of a cluster sheltering a farmhouse, or keep many other trees company in a State pine forest which will help to make those execrable French matches; but its every twig is utilised, and a hard-working existence takes away much of its beauty. The æsthetic tree, the tree with nothing to do but just to be a tree and look pretty, is rare in most countries; but in England it is the commonplace. Other countries have useful trees which look pretty, forests which are impressive in spite of man. England seems to share with Japan the amiable thriftlessness of giving up much land to growth which is not intended to serve any base utilitarian purpose at all. The hedges, which take up a considerable fraction of English arable soil, help to the park-like appearance of the country. They are inexpressibly beautiful when spring wakes them up to pipe their roulades in tender green. In summer they are splendid in blazon of leaf and flower. In autumn they flaunt banners of gold and red and brown. In winter, too, they are still beautiful, especially in the early winter when there still survive a few scarlet berries to glow and crackle and almost burn in the frost. If England, in a mood of thrift, swept away her hedges and put in their places fences (or that nice sense of keeping boundaries which enables the French cultivator to do without either), the saving of land would be enormous. But much of the park-like beauty of the country-side would depart; and with it the predominant note of the English landscape, which is that of the estate of a rich, careful, orderly nobleman. The change will be slow in coming, if it comes at all; for though he would be the last man, probably, to suspect it, the Englishman is at heart æsthetic. Yes, in spite of horse-hair furniture, gilt-framed oleographs, wax-flower decorations, and Early Victorian wall-papers, and other sins of which many of him have been, and still are, guilty, the Englishman has planted in him an instinct for art. It shows in his love of nature, of the green of his England. Almost every one aspires to come into touch with a bit of plant life. In the East End of London the aspiration takes the form of a window garden. You may see workingmen's "flats" let at six shillings a week with their window gardens. In the West End, land which must be worth many thousands of pounds per acre is devoted to garden use. For want of better, a terrace of houses will have a little strip of plantation, at back or front, common to all of them. House and "flat" agents tell that tenants almost always demand that there shall be at least sight of a green tree from some window. In the small suburban villas a very considerable tax of money and labour is cheerfully paid in the effort to keep in good order a little pocket- handkerchief of lawn and a few shrubs. This love of the garden is holy and wholesome, and it proves, I think, that the Englishman is at heart a lover of the beautiful, an "æsthetic," though he is supposed to be such a dull, prosaic, practical [Pg 26] [Pg 27] [Pg 28] [Pg 29] [Pg 30] [Pg 31] [Pg 32] person. Comparing the English with the French on this point, in my opinion it is in the practical application of æsthetic principles to life rather than in æsthetic sensibility that the French are superior to the English. What difference there is in æstheticism favours the English; there are deeper springs of art and poetry in the English people than in the French. But art has been far more carefully cherished and organised in France than in England. There is more general artistic education, if less true artistic feeling. Approach a typical French village of a modern type. The first impression given by the houses is of a vastly superior artistic consciousness. Both in colour and in form the houses are more beautiful than the same types in England, where domestic architecture of the villa type so often suggests either a penal establishment or the need of a penal establishment for the designer. But look a little closer, and one notices that, as compared with an English town, there is in France a conspicuous absence of gardens. Decorative trees, shrubberies, flowers are rare. Where there is garden space it is, as like as not, devoted to some shocking attempt at grandiose rococo work. The interiors, too, are disappointing. Thrift suggests the hideous closed-in stove as a substitute for open fires; but the garish wall-papers, the coloured prints, the "decorations" of shell-work or china, and so on, are not necessary, and are far more ugly than those of the average poor home in England, even of the "Early Victorian type." I repeat, the natural artistic standard of the French does not seem to be so high as that of the English, but the standard of artistic education is very much higher. A KENT MANOR-HOUSE AND GARDEN A KENT MANOR-HOUSE AND GARDEN I have noticed among all classes in England the same natural love of beauty. It does not exist only in the rich (but as a class it exists among them to a very marked degree: there is nothing in the world more beautiful than an English manor house, with its park and garden); it permeates the whole people. I recall a farmer to whom I spoke of the waste caused by the gorgeous yellow-blossomed weeds which invaded his wheat. "Yes," he said, half content, half sorry, "but they do look so beautiful." It was not that he was a lazy farmer, but he did actually love the beautiful wild life which came to rob his wheat of its nourishment. At another time I remember meeting on a country road a draper's porter (one of those poor casual labourers who make an odd penny here and there by carrying parcels for small drapers). He had an enforced holiday and he was tramping out into the country from the town "to see the green fields." He did not say in so many words that he "loved" the green fields. It would not occur to him probably to attempt to phrase his feeling towards them. But it was clear that he did, most fondly; and he was fairly typical of the Englishman of his class. As an exile the Englishman carries away with him the ideal of the soft green English country-side, and tries to reconstruct England wherever he may settle overseas. English trees, English grass, English flowers he sedulously cultivates in Australia, in Canada, in South Africa, and wins some strange triumphs over Nature in many of his acclimatisations. Occasionally the transplanting succeeds too well. An Englishman with a touch of nostalgia—not enough of it to send him back to his Home country—introduced rabbits to Australia. It would be home-like, he thought, to see rabbits popping in and out of their burrows. That was the beginning. Now there are places in Australia where you can hardly put your foot down without treading on a rabbit, and sufficient of money to build a large navy has had to be spent in keeping the rabbit-pest in check. Another home-sick colonist, who came possibly, however, from north of the Tweed, introduced Scottish thistles into the same country with disastrous results. [Pg 33] [Pg 34] [Pg 35] Yet another English acclimatisation was that of the field daisy to Tasmania. It flourished wonderfully in its new surroundings, and had such a bad effect on the pasturage that a war had to be waged against its spread. But, seeing an English meadow decked with daisies, as thick as stars in the Milky Way, one might almost argue that such beauty is good compensation for a little loss of grass, as my farmer thought with his invaded wheat patch. The wide grass walks of Kew Gardens in the daisy time are lovely enough to make one forget all material things. To give a thought to the niceties of a cow's appetite, or to the yield of butter, when remembering such daisies, would not be possible. All along the English country-side the gardens are delicious, from the winsome cottage plots to the nobly sweeping landscape surrounding a typical manor house, blending a hundred individual beauties of lawn, rosery, herb border, walled garden, wild garden into one enchanting mosaic. But, withal, it is the wonderful variety and perfection of the trees that is most remarkable. The affectionate regard for trees in England is a most pleasing thing to one who in his own country has had often to protest against a sort of rage against trees, as if they were enemies of the human race. (The pioneer who has to clear a forest for the sake of his crop and pasture gets into an unhappy habit afterwards of tree- murder out of sheer wantonness.) At Ampthill Park (an old Henry VIII. hunting seat) I have been shown oaks which in Cromwell's time were recorded as "too old to be cut down for the building of ships." They are still carefully preserved, some of them enjoying old-age pensions in the shape of props to keep up their venerable limbs. Were I advising a friend abroad who knew nothing of England and wished to make a pilgrimage to its chief shrines of beauty, I think I should urge him to come in the late winter to Plymouth and explore first Cornwall and Devon, seeing, in the first case, how England's "rocky shores beat back the envious siege of watery Neptune." The coming of the waves of an Atlantic storm to Land's End offers a grand spectacle. He should stay in the south-west to see the first breath of spring bring the trees to green, and the earliest of the daffodils to flower. He will very likely encounter some wet weather. The Dartmoor people themselves say:— The south wind blows and brings wet weather, The north gives wet and cold together, The west wind comes brimful of rain, The east wind drives it back again. Then if the sun in red should set, We know the morrow must be wet; And if the eve is clad in grey The next is sure a rainy day. But despite showers, spring on Dartmoor is a glowing pageant of green and gold. After feasting upon it a week or so, my imaginary pilgrim would make his way to the Thames valley to welcome yet another spring. The Gulf Stream gives the south-west corner of England a softer climate and an earlier spring than the east enjoys. By the time the daffodils are nodding their golden heads in Cornwall, the crocus will be just showing its flame along the borders of the Thames, and the pilgrim will understand Browning's rapture:— Oh to be in England Now that April's there, And whoever wakes in England Sees some morning, unaware, That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf Round the elm tree hole are in tiny leaf; While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough In England—now! When once the spring is in full tide towards summer, it is difficult to say where one should search for special beauty in England, for all is so beautiful, from the Yorkshire hills to the Sussex marshes beloved of Coventry Patmore—flat lands whose drowsy beauties glow under the broad sunshine and suggest a tranquil charm of quiet joy tinged with melancholy, too subtle to appeal to the casual "tripper," but of insistent call to all who understood the more intimate charms of Nature. It is spacious is Sussex. It shelters solitudes. Its quiet, slow-voiced people are sympathetic with their surroundings. When storms rage Sussex takes a new aspect. The screaming of the gulls, the sobbing of the sedges in the wind, the wide, flat expanse laid, as it were, bare to the rage of the storm, gives to the wind a sense of poignant desolation. In Sussex, when Henry VIII. was king, many "great cannones and shotters were caste for His Majestie's service"; and the county was notable for its iron mines and foundries. From Sussex earlier had come all of the 3000 horseshoes on which an English king's army had galloped to ruin at Bannockburn. Owing to the iron in the soil the Sussex streams sometimes run red, so that "at times the grounde weepes bloud." Now there is an end...