23 JULY 1932, Page 11

A German historian (in a passage introduced to Inc long

ago by that fine German scholar Mr. J. L. Garvin) said that you could not understand England and the English without looking into the pages of Gilbert White, of Selborne. Nor can you understand England without appreciation of the part played in the country houses by the steadily vanishing company of country gentlemen, inhabiting hereditary estates. A very great number of them were naturalists, historians, foresters and farmers ; and the most culpably feudal were at least at one with the aims of the Council for the Preservation of Rural England, which endeavours against rapidly increasing difficulties to keep the beauties that gathered round the old country houses like reeds about the banks of the Huntingdonshire Ouse. And this is my experience that no one so much regrets their disappearance as the poorer inhabitants of the villages.

W. BEACII TROMEAS.