HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS IN KENT.*
KENT, the garden of England, is not only one of the most beautiful of our counties, but it is also perhaps the richest of all in human interest. Indeed, so rich is it, so stored with historical associations, both inland and upon its coast, that at the first blush one is aghast that any author should dare to undertake to compress between the covers of one volume any attempt to cope with it. Shakespeare and Chaucer, Canter- bury and Dover, the Thames and the Goodwin Sands, hops and cricket, Jack Cade and the Maid of Kent, David Copper. fieldand Edwin Drood, Romney Marsh and Shakespeare's Head,—how is he to begin to do justice to them ? And after they are disposed of there are all the busy towns, each with its history, the villages, the hills, the coast. It makes the brain reel. Yet authors are full of courage, and never had • Highways and Byways in Kent. By Walter Jerrold. With Illustrations by Hugh Thomson. London Macmillan and Co. Ns.]
they more than at the present moment; and Mr. Walter Jerrold, who has walked bravely over this storied county for Messrs. Macmillan's series, has justified his enterprise by
producing a book which at any rate will stand for long as the best hors d'ceuvre to the Kentish banquet. But how little can
be say, how much must he neglect, in four hundred and thirty-eight pages! Kent is, in fact, so rich that there might be a "Highways and Byways Series" of about the same length for every square mile in the Ordnance map. Mr. Jerrold's omissions, however, are curiously few. He seems to have taken note of almost everything, although of course the briefest reference is often all that is possible. He has been through the Archaeological Society's papers; he has read the poets and the novelists and the historians. Now and then he has read too much, as when he gives to East Sutton this passage, in default, we suppose, of a better :-
"It was at East Sutton Park, still occupied by the Filmer family, that, according to a recent book of reminiscences, some years ago a certain passage at arms took place which resulted in a sketch being sent to Punch. After dinner one evening the noise from the housekeeper's room became so pronounced that Lady Filmer sent for the housekeeper, and complained. 'Really Mrs. , I must beg you to keep a little more order downstairs; the noise is quite annoying.' 'I can assure your ladyship that the noise which comes from the drawing-room is quite as annoying to us as ours can possibly be to your ladyship,' was the impudent reply. A daughter of the house made a sketch of the scene, and sent it to Punch, where it appeared under the heading of 'Flunkeyana."
That surely is stretching the scrap-book theory of guide-book-
making to its finest, if not breaking, point. It is almost as if Punch's own burlesque spirit had for the moment entered the topographer. For the rest, he is staid enough, and though
never startling in epithet or enthusiasm, is a very agreeable cicerone. Mr. Hugh Thomson, the illustrator, is very unequal. When he is not good, he is almost bad; but when he is good, he is very good indeed.
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