6 JANUARY 1917, Page 32

.RydaL By the late Miss Armitt. Edited by W. F.

Rawnsley. (Kendal : Titus Wilson. 12s. 6d. net.)—The little village in the Lake Country, charming in itself and associated always in literature with Wordsworth, De Quincey, and Hartley Coleridge, found a most pains- taking historian in the late Miss Armitt, as this voluminous work shows. She traced the successive owners of the few houses of note, as well as the lords of the manor of the interesting Fleming family. She gave a full account of De Quincey's financial troubles in connexion with The Nab, where his wife and family lived for many years. Parochial history written on this scale throws light on social conditions, and there is a good deal in the book about the " statesmen " or yeomen of the dale that deserves a record.