MURRAY'S EASTERN COUNTIES.* MR. MURRAY has at length done for

the Eastern Counties that which he had previously done for Scotland, Ireland, and the majority of the other English counties in their natural groups,—he has produced a very neat, compendious, and admirably compiled Handbook for them, valuable alike to the systematic tourist, the chance visitor, or the resident aboriginal. The work is distin- guished by the same care and accuracy as its predecessors, and is, perhaps, even especially notable for full and interesting discussion on all points of historical and antiquarian interest. It is judici- ously arranged in numbered routes, which with branch excursions on either side, form a guide to the traveller to everything worth seeing in the four counties. Essex, being in great measure isolated geographically, historically, and ethnologically from the remain- ing three, is treated of separately in the general introduction. Norfolk and Suffolk are in many respects intimately connected, and are taken together ; while Cambridgeshire, again, stands by itself in many respects. Essex, as the forest county, the home of Boadicea and Caractacus, the seat of the revolt of the Trinobantes and the establishment of a Roman military occupa- tion on a more thoroughgoing scale perhaps than that existing in any other part of England, the scene of the long series of desperate battles between the East Saxons and the Danes, and to this day distinguished by many and marked local pecu- liarities, certainly requires separate consideration. Suffolk and Norfolk, mainly peopled by the Iceni, and subsequently the two component parts of the self-contained kingdom of East Anglia, cannot well be separated. Cambridgeshire, again, part of the country of mere and morass, with but little early history beyond that of the romantic exploits of Hereward and his mythical heroes, with its glorious architectural enclaves of Ely and Cambridge, and in more modern days the field of triumph of hydraulic engineering, has little in common with either East Anglia or Essex. Accord- ing to this arrangement, therefore, the editor takes the tourist throughout the four counties, commencing with the home county.

We are well aware that the bare idea of a " tour " in Essex, in the accepted sense of the word, is to the average Londoner a stumbling-block, and to the Ai neur foolishness. There can be no doubt that Essex is generally regarded by the majority of otherwise well-informed strangers as a vast semi-paludic ex- panse, inhabited by a species of agrestic ogres, unintelligent and repulsive. The belief that the much talked-of " Essex marshes " are coterminous with the county is singularly prevalent, and obstinately adhered to. Tell one who holds it that High Beech is the greatest elevation within thirty miles of London, and that Langdon Hills, within half-a-dozen miles of the Thames, are close on 800 feet high, and he simply accepts the statement with a mentally reserved conviction that, owing to an abnormal physical idiosyn- crasy of the county, analogous to the morbid ilk; of its inhabitants, the law of gravitation is held in abeyance, and that morasses exist on their summits. Mr. Murray, however, assures us that

• ifaxdbook for Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, and Cambridgeshire. London: Murray. 1870. "excepting the lowlands of the eastern coast" (locally known as "the Hundreds ") " Essex is not a flat county," and though "nowhere highly picturesque," the "lover of tranquil, level scenery, with fine trees, rich harvest-fields, and green meadows, will find much to please him throughout Essex." In 1594 Essex was described by Norden as,— "Most fatt, frutef till, and full of profitable thinges, exceeding (as far as I can dude) anie other shire, for the generall comodeties, and the, plentie. Though Suffolk° be more highlie comended of some, wherwytb Ism not yet acquaynted. But this shire seemeth to mo to deserve the title of the English° Goshen, the fattest of the lands; comparable to Palestina, that flowed with milke and bunny°. But I cannot comende the healthfulness of it ; and especiallie near the sea coaster, Roohtord, Denge, Tenderinge hundreds, and other lowe places about the creekes, which gave me a most cruell quarterne fever. But the male ancl sweets oomodeties coantervayle the daunger," —the latter part of his description showing how even the penalty paid for a visit to the dreaded "Hundreds" did not bias his mind against the county. And although even up to 1288 the Royal Forest of Essex extended from the Lea " usque ad poutem de Cattawadd "—the Dan and Beersheba of the county—it seems to have been enclosed and fenced at quite as early a period as the greater part of East Anglia. And certainly the present agricul- tural position of the county, "fact, frutefull, and full of profitable thinges," bears out Norden's account.

The staid and practical nature of the inhabitants causing them mainly to eschew the vain and frivolous pursuits and amusements of the age, Essex is corrupted by no centres of dissipation such as Tunbridge Wells or Scarborough. There is, indeed a watering- place at Southend, prettily placed, dry, healthy for children, and, we believe, not over-exciting for convalescent adults. At Dover- court there has recently been established what the editor terms & "small and not disagreeable watering-place "—just what a good- natured man, who had dined before he went there, and had not got to stop there long, might say. Harwich, the adjacent "old, but hardly picturesque," seaport, was once visited by Queen Elizabeth, who, on finding that the corporation had no pecuniary requests to make, commended it as "a pretty town, wanting nothing." The editor of the Handbook, with a pardonable play upon the word, gives his opinion that Harwich " wants " sweet- ness and light. The writer has not visited Harwich for many years, but does not call the assertion in question for a moment.. There are other small watering-places, frequented by their im- mediate neighbours, but, generally speaking, the superior attrac- tions of Yarmouth and Lowestoft prevail with the seaside-going people of Essex.

But if Essex present few attractions to the mere pleasure- seeker, "the antiquary will find it inferior to few in England," says the editor, with justice. Although but few flint implements, or other so-called " primaval remains" have been found in the country, it is moat rich in relics of all kinds of British, Roman, and Saxon origin, especially of the two former periods. Colchester, of course, as the capital of Cunobeline, the Roman Camulodunum, the scene of the massacre of the Roman garrison by the revolted Iceni and Trinobantes, and the seat of by far the largest and most massively-built Norman keep in England, is the centre of archaeo- logical interest ; but throughout the entire county are scat- tered memorials of Roman domination, and the subsequent deadly- contest between Saxon and Dane. After the final subjugation. of the British—at Messing, near Kelvedon, probably—Essex, being exposed to the attacks of the vanguard of Saxon sea-Uhlans. was. placed under the control of the " Comes littoris Saxonici; " but it was only as recently as 1864, during the reclamation of some flats at the mouth of the Blackwater, that the site of the fortress of Othona was identified by the discovery of founda- tions, coins, and miscellaneous remains, similar to those found at Gariononum (Burgh Castle), Rutupium, and Anderida, all parts of the comprehensive system of coast defence presided over by the Roman " Lord Warden." Certainly Essex must have pre- sented very great attractions to foreigners, for no sooner had the Saxons fairly installed themselves after the departure of their enemy the Count, than the Northmen began, and for a couple of centuries Saxon and Dane were at it hammer and tongs along the estuaries and creeks of the south-east coast. At Heybridge, near Maldon, was fought in 991 one of the most ferocious battles of the whole series, and one of which the details have been best preserved, —between Olaf Trygwesson and his ships lying in the Chelmer,

and the Ealdorman of Essex. The " heathen men" gained the day, and carried off the Earl's head, notwithstanding that the

bridge—not improbably identical in site, if not in material, with the present one,—was " kept so well" by three Saxon representative& of the heroes of the bridge on the Tiber—Wulfstan, /Elfhere, and

Mucus. The widow of the Earl wrought her husband's exploits on tapestry, after the fashion of the time, and in the present day Mr. Freeman has revivified the story in glowing language. The Northmen, however, were too crippled to advance on Maldon or Witham. A quarter of a century later was fought the great fight at Ashingdon on the Crouch, between Edmund Ironside and Canute. Mr. Freeman has effectually disproved the theory that Assington, in Suffolk, was the scene of the battle. Canewdon,

near Ashingdon, more than probably embodies the name of the victor, and the fabric-of the church at Ashingdon is clearly that

erected four years afterwards. In its later history, Essex has little incident to boast, if we except the heroic defence of Col-

W. Harvey, the discoverer of circulation, is buried at Hempsted ; Sir John Hawkwood, the soldier of fortune and a patron hero of the Guy Livingstonidse, at Hedingham ; "Jack Straw" was an Essex man ; and Hopkins the witchfinder discovered and burnt seven of " the horrible sect of witches" who were living close to his own house at Manningtree.

In no part of England, perhaps, are local peculiarities of custom and speech so strongly marked as they are in Essex from one end of the county to the other. This may probably be accounted for by the homogeneity of the East Saxon people by whom it was settled, and their slight subsequent intercourse with the rest of England. The traveller who wishes to study the genius of Essex manners and dialect in their most characteristic types cannot do better than visit a district known as " the Rodings," so called from a cluster of small villages of that name lying on the outskirts of the great Essex forest—now reduced to Epping and Hainault forests—and between the high roads from London to Cambridge on one side, and to Colchester on the other.

The Rodings, with a dozen or more adjacent parishes, abut out by want of practicable roads from communication with the rest of the world, and as the Handbook puts it, very remote from urban and scholastic influences," form a dis- trict emphatically sui genesis. The editor seems to give undue cre- dence to the theory that the villages are named from the river Bod- ing, and the river in its turn from rod-ing or "rood-meadow," i.e., a meadow marked with a cross on its banks. That the district was a settlement of the Saxon Rodingas, and hence the name of both villages and river, is tolerably clear, and we may thus account for the strong tribal feeling which distinguishes the inhabitants, even amongst Essexians. Rude of speech, wild in mien, and uncouth in gait as they may appear to the "foreigner," they nevertheless possess many and great virtues, eminent among which is a devotion to the place of their birth, compared to which that of a Swiss for his canton, a Bostonian for the Hub, or Canon Kingsley for

Wessex is cold and languid. As one of their own prophets has said- "The world, or at least the isle of Britain, is divided into three parts, looked on most likely as three concentric circles. The hallowed centre, the bull's-eye, the 724 6P,Pc0.6;1 the ins or Ecbatana, is ' the Rudings round about them, in the middle circle, lie the 'Hundreds'—the rest of Essex ; further still, on the outer circle, lie the Shires,'—the rest of Britain. As for the rest of Europe and of the world, they are doubtless looked on as so utterly barbarous as to deserve no place at all in the geography of the favoured Rudingas."

Certain it is that to this day a visitor from the North or Mid- land Counties is spoken of by the worthy Rodingas as "a furriner from somewhere down in the Shires,"—pronounced "Sheres," with an indefinable twang of contempt. It is curious to notice in mediaeval records how often the devil used to appear in human form in Essex. Danbury Church, for example, was destroyed by lightning in 1402, and the devil, in the shape of a Minorite friar, was seen very busy in the building, " insolentissime debacchans."

How his identity was ascertained, as in the case of most of these allotropic fiends, we are not told ; but judging from the way in which a new rector from " the Shires " is regarded by the autochthones of an Essex parish, we are strongly inclined to suspect that their ancestors of five centuries ago could easily have mistaken a respectable friar from the midland counties, not under- standing their speech, and refreshing himself from a flask instead of drinking " owd beer," for the Evil One.

Want of space forbids us from following the editor through the remaining three counties, though we should have much liked to have taken a hasty glance with him, at least, at the adjacent East Anglian county of Suffolk,—"silly Suffolk," as it is commonly called, to the great but needless pain of worthy South-Folk, not con- scious of exceptional unwisdom. The point is not gone into here, but it seems to us clear that the epithet is simply a localized in- stance of the curious revolution of meaning by which the Anglo- Saxon selig, holy, gradually acquired a contemptuous signification, as piety degenerated into superstition, and finally developed into " silly " in its present acceptation. The fervent piety of the early East-Anglian monarchs, and the extraordinary devotion paid throughout the county to its hero-saint Edmund, amply account for its original application ; while the magnificent Perpendicular churches, built on the influx of wealth caused by the introduction of woollen manufacture, prove that the county had not lost its dis- tinctive character. The group of these, by the way, at Bury, Sudbury, Melford, Lavenham, and Clare, together with the Norman tower and abbey ruins at the first mentioned place, will repay any student or amateur of ecclesiastical architecture for a few days'visit.

We cannot conclude without expressing our gratification that Mr. Murray is carrying out his series of handbooks with such completeness and care. Thirty-three English counties are now included, and when complete, it will form a perfect local history of England which no good library ought to be without,—certainly no library of any kind in the Eastern Counties should be without the volume before us.