The Portsmouth Road and The Bath Road. By Charles G.
Harper. (Cecil Palmer. 7s. 6d. not each.)—Canterbury.
Mr. Harper's two volumes will be quite entertaining company for those who pass along these great highways, for they are full of the lighter parts of history and amusing snatches from the social gossips. On the Portsmouth road we overtake on the way Pepys and Wilkes, Peter the Great and Queen Anne, with smugglers and highwaymen to fill up our odd moments. The history is not always very profound and the judgments are sometimes hasty. For example, it is hard on the fine Norman architecture of Petersficld Church to say that it would be better screened by houses. But take it all in all, Mr. Harper is far more exciting than the average novel.—The Bath Road volume is equally bright, for it is full, as it ought to be, of the ghosts of the Pitts and Beau Nash and the fine ladies and gentlemen of the eighteenth century ; and the author has caught the spirit of them all. His letterpress is more amusing than his pictures, but the old prints are both instructive and charming. There is urgent need of such books as these ; for they may teach reverence for our beautiful and historical highways, in an age when Road Boards have begun (for example, the valley road between Reigate and Guildford) to handle them as the barbarians "once tortured the classical beauties of Roman Europe.—Miss Dorothy Gardiner has attempted something more ponderous in her Canterbury volume of the " Story of the English Towns" series ; but her style and matter are scarcely strong enough to carry with complete success such a great subject. Nevertheless, she has recorded many facts which the teachers of the neighbourhood should turn to good account in their classes ; for local history is the basis of an intelligent knowledge of the world. The reproductions of old prints are delightful.
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