MR. THORNBURY'S TOUR ROUND ENGLAND.*

LN a dedication to Charles Dickens, which can only have met the public gaze when the great novelist was already withdrawn from it, Mr. Thornbury describes the origin of this book, and gives us a clue to its constantly-recurring mannerisms. It seems that Mr. Dickens suggested a series of excursions from London, which were to be made " as the crow flies," and in the course of which Mr. Thornbury was " to pick up from a bird's-eye point of per- spective, as I passed any beautiful or memorable place, all I could, whether of an historical, biographical, or legendary nature, that would interest general readers." We have the result of this advice before us, and we regret that Mr. Thornbury has acted upon it too literally. He has been far too cursory in his flights. Instead of wandering from one point to another and gathering his materials on the spot, he has apparently made a hasty sketch of the external aspect of each place, and filled up the rest of the chapter by the aid of books of reference. The consequence is that a good deal of the book reads like pure cram. It is clear that most of the details about the Wars of the Roses and the earlier periods of which we hear so often, have not been gleaned by Mr. Thornbury himself from the fields on which those battles were fought. Yet, if the main result of a Tour round England is to be that we are deluged with second-hand history, the writer might have stayed • A Tour Round England. By Walter Thornbury. 2 vols. London Hurst and Blacken. 1870.

at home, and the readers might have gone straight to his autho- rities. We suspect that the crow, which makes its appearance on the cover of Mr. Thornbury's volumes, and in almost every chapter, does not perch on the dome of St. Paul's, but on the dome of the British Museum. And while we speak of the crow, we cannot help saying that we are utterly nick of it before we get through five or six chapters. We are always hearing of its black wings, its rapid flight, its intelligent or pictorial eye, its ancient lineage, which leads it to be biographical, its habit of writing with feathers from its own wing, its everlasting " coign of van-

tage." Gladly, indeed, would we wring its neck if we could get hold of it. But Mr. Thornbury keeps up the metaphor relent- lessly to the very last. -rhe only part from which we miss the

crow is the index, where it was certainly entitled to a place, as the most conspicuous object in the volumes. However, Mr. Thorn- bury himself would probably be staggered if he were shown a catalogue of its appearances. So long as his papers came out one by one in Mr. Dickens's periodical, the steady recurrence of the crow was a natural imitation of the master's style, the hall-mark

of All the Year Round silver.

When we put aside these unfortunate vices of style, and examine the matter of Mr. Thornbury's book, we find in it much that is interesting. The title, indeed, is a misnomer, as, instead of circling round England, Mr. Thornbury has described four straight lines from the centre to the circumference. His first journey takes him due west by Brentford, Hounslow, Windsor, Reading, Marl- borough, Taunton, Exeter, and Plymouth to the Land's End.

His second course is due east through Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk.

The third is due south, ending at Southampton ; and the fourth in an exactly opposite direction, leading through Bedford, Northamp- ton, and Lincoln to Yorkshire and Northumberland. Straight

cuts like these necessarily leave out a good deal that has a claim to be represented, and pass hastily by many places where the tourist ought to linger. Yet it is not for us to question the policy of Mr.

Thornbury's method, or to suggest that he would have done better if he had covered less ground with more completeness. We have already complained that he gives us too little of his own experience, and that in many cases we cannot tell whether he is drawing on his own knowledge or on the labours of others. The partiality shown for events of a distant date generally leads us to the latter

conclusion, but there are times when Mr. Thornbury uses his own eyes, and sketches landscapes or relates traditions which bear

traces of personal observation and inquiry. There is nothing in the book before us to recall the patient investigation and exhaus- tive labour of Mr. Walter White, who plods over every inch of ground with his knapsack on his back and his note-book in his hand, and makes his readers feel as if they had borne him company. The journey with him has certainly been instructive, but not altogether lively, and a good many picturesque effects have been missed in the pursuit of more practical objects. Mr. Thornbury is far brisker and has a keener eye for natural beauty, but he does not catch local characteristics with the same readiness, and we never know where he gets his information. In one instance, at least, he has not gone to the most recent sources. He tells us the old story of the Vicar of Bray, that Simon Aleyn who held the living during

the reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth, without being aware that the tradition has been rudely shaken. The readers of Mr. Jeaffreson's Book about the Clergy will remem-

ber that there was no incumbent of Bray bearing the name of Aleyn during the time of Henry VIII. and Edward VI., while the. incumbent who held the living under those kings died before the accession of Mary. Yet Mr. Thornbury, not content with repeat- ing the old tale, carries his mistake still further by imagining the Vicar of Bray listening to the ballad which bears his name, and which was written in the time of George I. It was something, no doubt, for an ecclesiastic to be " first a Papist, then a Protestant, next a Papist, and lastly, a Protestant again," but what is that compared to the longevity which could carry him from the days of the Tudors to those of the House of Brunswick?

We should be sorry if a minute examination of Mr. Thornbury's historical details were to disclose any more errors of this kind. It is pleasanter to turn to his pictures of the Eastern Counties and of the Cornish coast, to accompany him across Salisbury Plain and over Dartmoor. As a sketcher Mr. Thornbury has decided merit, Lid our readers may thank us for quoting the annexed description of a Norfolk decoy :—

" At Ranworth, where the marshes vein the flat pastures with a deep green, where the pools and dykes are marked in the ground-plan by waving green patches and long sharp lines, where gnats darken the aguish air, and all day and night you hear the restless clank of the pimp mills that are draining the levels that look so flat and so Dutch, you come to a wood on the margin of a lake. The first glimpse of the decoy is an arch of brown network among the trees, and glimpses of a pale fence of reeds. In the centre of a hundred acres of reedy and oozy water, thick with water-lilies and ranunculuses, spread eleven shallow creeks, pointing star fashion to various points of the compass. These rays are about six yards wide at their mouth, narrowing gradually as they recede and craftily curved to the right. They run about seventy-five yards each, and terminate in a point. At about thirty feet from the mouth of each there rises an iron-rod arch some ten feet high, smaller arches follow the end one, sinking to less than two feet high and wide. These ar- ches are covered with cord nets which, staked to the ground, form long cages broad and open to the pool. These are what Norfolk men call 'pipes.' On each side of the airy traps are screens of greyish yellow reeds five feet high. The screen runs in zig-zag about a foot from the water's edge, walling along the edge of the pipe alternately high and low ; wild fowl always fly against the wind, so that a pipe to be successful must have the wind blowing down it from the narrow end towards the mouth. In Norfolk the north-east pipe is a special favourite. There is no mys- tery in decoying ; it needs only a man, some decoy ducks, and a trained dog. The docks are to rise and come to the man for the bruised barley be sprinkles on the water at the signal of a very faint yet clear whistle. The ' piper' dog may be a mongrel, only he must be of a grey colour, and of quiet, obedient, staid habits. The decoy season is almost exactly contemporaneous with the oyster season, when the reeds and rank grass have been cleared away outside the pipes. The time chosen is often noon en a bright day. The decoy man carries with him a piece of lighted peat to neutralize any scent of himself that might scare the fowl. Stealing along like a murderer, he slips behind the screen, and looks through loopholes prepared in the reed walls. If there are any signs of emerald necks and brown backs he gives the whistle, fatal as Varney's to Amy Robsart. The moment the decoy ducks swim towards the mouth of the pipe the wild birds gain confidence, and enter more or less eagerly into the pipe, allured by the floating barley; at the same moment the piper dog, running along the screen, leaps back through the first break in search of biscuit thrown him. This instantly allures the teal and wid- geon, who then flock in with greater confidence. They are now safe in the toils, and the decoy man having fitted a purse-net about as large as a corn-sack to the narrow end of the opening, an assistant, on a given signal, shows himself at one of the breaks in the screen in the rear of the ducks and, without shouting, throws up his arms or waves his hat. The sen- sitive birds, always suspicious of man, who loves them only too well, in- stantly, with splash, flap, and screaming quaok, flash up the pipe in utter panic, and making for the first opening, find themselves in the inhos- pitable purse-net. The decoy-man's cruel grinning face soon appears to the jostling captives, and in five minutes they are ready for Leadenhall Market. The decoy ducks, if well trained, have long before this painful denouement pivoted round and gone back calmly to the pool, to bo the sirens of future mallards."

At Yarmouth Mr. Thornbury detains us for awhile with an interesting account of the process of curing herrings, and of the mackerel fishery. The old coaching days come in for many stories of adventure,—some with highwaymen, one with an escaped lioness, which sprang on the leaders, and was beaten off by the fore hoofs of one of them. While we are in the neighbourhood of Dorking, we are told of an old man being still alive who served as footboy in Sheridan's country-house at Polesden. Mr. Thornbury learnt from this informant that Sheridan would frequently drive out with four horses and fall into an ambuscade of sheriff's officers, who would seize the leaders. Among Sheridan's tricks on his creditors we may count his selling a butcher a drove of hogs, which a farmer had been allowed to drive on his stubbles, and his having a leg of mutton cooked while the tradesman who had sent it in for approval was waiting to have it returned or to get the money. While at 13odmin Mr. Thornbury gives us the wild legend of the Cornish wizard Tregeagle, whose corpse was brought up from the grave to give evidence about a deed that he had destroyed, and who was afterwards doomed to purgatorial tasks as endless as the punishment of Sisyphus and the Danaides. The telling of this legend would perhaps be more effective if Mr. Thornbury did not speak of the " daughters of the Danaides," but we are willing to treat that as a slip incidental to hasty writing. There are two or three other places where a little more care would make sentences read gram- matically, and Mr. Thornbury would do well to prune the exuber- ance of his style. But most of his faults are to be ascribed to his adoption of a mannerism which is not his own, and which we trust he will throw off on the first opportunity.