23 JULY 1898, Page 3

The annual meeting of the National Trust for Places of

Historic Interest or Natural Bear.ty was held at Grosvenor House on Wednesday, the Duke of Westminster presiding. It is very satisfactory to find that the Trust is making steady progress, and that it has already a nucleus of that great national gallery of natural pictures which it is, we hope, destined some day to possess. A fine piece of cliff scenery in Wales, a wave-beaten headland jatting out into the Cornish seas opposite Tintagel, a medimval clergy house, an old guildhall in a cathedral town, a hill-top in Kent, with the Weald stretching out below it, and a feudal castle—the arrangements for acquiring the latter are not yet quite complete—is not a bad record for a young Society which has no endowments and few rich members, but which is determined to save as much natural beauty and as many historic associations as it can. The gift of the Kentish hill-top, and so the view from it, has a very special interest. It has been placed in the hands of the Trust by Mr. and Mrs. Richardson Evans, as a memorial of a dead friend, Mr. Frederick Feemey. Instead of erecting a tombstone or other sculptured memorial to their friend, they have dedicated to his memory a beautiful piece of natural scenery. The deed is as rational as it is pious in its oldest sense, and deserves many imitators. How much good marble would remain unspoiled if Mr. and Mrs. Richardson Evans'a most patriotic example could be followed. They are the pioneers in what may prove a movement fraught with great. gain to England.