13 JULY 1901, Page 25

In "The Gentleman's Magazine Library" (Elliot Stock), appearing under the

general supervision of George Laurence Gounne, we have English Topography, edited by F. A. Milne, M.A. (7s. Gd.) The three counties included in this part are Wiltshire, Warwickshire, Westmoreland,—we give them in the order of their importance for archmological purposes, as tested by the space occupied by the notices. This is for Wiltshire a hundred and eighty-five pages, for Warwickshire a hundred and thirty, and for Webtmoreland thirty-one only. But, as Mr. Milne reminds us, Westmoreland was much out of the way in the last century. As between Warwickshire and Wiltshire, there is a disproportion of area, the latter county having three hundred thousand more acres. Mr. Milne has taken much pains with his work, which is, indeed, of a kind to which there is no end. There are scores of things in the volume about which whole chapters might have been written. There is Littlecote, for instance, with the strange story of Wild Darrell and Chief Justice Popham. Darrell was a well-known person in the sixteenth century, sad Mr. Milne should have consulted Mr. Hubert Hall's monograph upon him. Stratford-on-Avon occupies, we see, twenty-eight pages, in which there is no little amount of curious and interest- ing matter. The first entry relates the cutting down of the famous mulberry tree; the last, that of the Gospel Oak.