C URRENT LITERAT ETRE.
A HAMPSHIRE GUIDE AND A NORFOLK NOTE-BOOK.
Hampshire, with the Isle of Wight. By G. A. B. Dewar, John Vaughan, and others. With Illustrations. (J. M. Dent and Co. 4s. 6d. net.)—Norfolk. By W. Dutt. (Same publishers and price.)—Natural features are the great and almost the only claim of one county to attract visitors from another. That, at least, is the conclusion come to on laying down these two pretty, well-bound, and well-written guides to Hampshire and Norfolk. Though part of a series of "County Guides," they are the two which any one who knows rural England well would at once select before all the others if he relied merely on a previous knowledge of our counties, without com- paring the treatment. What makes Norfolk so intensely attrac- tive? Not its towns or antiquities, though it has enough of- both ; but the wonderful variety of scenery,—the broads, the heaths, their very antithesis, the meal-marshes, the sandhills, the wonderful air, the interest of its fisheries and decoys, its game preserves and wildfowl sanctuaries. In Hampshire this standard of excellence is easily put to the test. The nearer to Nature the county approaches the greater the acknowledged charm. For in Hampshire, though one-tenth of the county is wood, and it has a vast acreage of water, two things stand pre-eminent above all, and that absolutely without question,—the Hampshire chalk rivers, the Avon, Test, and Itchen, which are almost entirely natural features, and the New Forest, which has been prac- tically let alone, except for a little planting in parts, since the Conqueror shot stags there. Which things being so, it is perhaps fortunate that the historian and guide is Mr. G. A. B. Dewar, a native of the northern highlands of Hamp- shire, to which he is greatly attached, and of which he has written very pleasantly in " Wild Life of the Hampshire Highlands," the county which Cobbett was addicted to visiting to go to Weyhill Fair, and where North Hampshire squires still venerate the name of Assheton Smith. Mr. Dewar does not mention Mr. Tom Smith, of the Hambledon, of whom an admirer said that if be were a fox he would rather be hunted by the best pack in England than by Tom Smith with a stick in his hand. Mr. Dewar's itineraries ar) mainly those of the naturalist, sportsman, and good countryman who has eyes for Nature and feasts them where he can. Usually the subject is too profuse for him to treat as he would like. But except in the New Forest, which is rather blurred in these snapshots, his pictures of the scenery and talk by the way is generally interesting. The variety of landscape in the county is astonishing. A county which holds Farnham and the pine and heather of the Hindhead regions, the loam and wood zones, the heath and forest areas, the chalk-down areas, the Test, the Itchen, and the Avon valleys, veins of most precious worth, not to mention Winchester, Portsmouth, Christchurch, and Southampton, and their adjacent harbours and the Solent Sea, with the New Forest as a climax, is surely with- out rival. The history of the Isle of Wight was an unnecessary addition to this book. It is now a separate county and deserved separate treatment, though Mr. Vaughan has done his best in the space given him. Special articles on the birds, flowers, butterflies, geology, and sport of Hants are of distinct value. The flowers are curiously local. Thus the hyssop only grows on the walls of Beaulieu Abbey, and the only known. habitat of the yellow wall-rocket in the county is on the old town wall of Southampton. Near Calshot Castle, on the shingle spit there, the fishermen use to bleach the shoots of wild sea-kale, by covering them with sand and shingle. The New Forest is a most famous place for butterflies and moths ; but Mr. Hewett, of Winchester _College, says that nearly all the New Forest insects can be found in any of the woods, probably mean- ing those near Winchester. The epitaph of a New Forest worthy, the Rev. William Gilpin of Boldre, who wrote the best descriptions of forest scenery ever penned, will fitly close this notice. He was vicar of Boldre. On his tomb is a long con- fidential epitaph telling him be, aged eighty, and his wife, aged eighty-two, lie together, secure from the dangerous enjoyments of life. It, or rather the author of it, goes on to pay a little compliment to the surviving neighbours of the dead; referring to their place in a better world, he adds: "Here it will
be a new joy to meet several of their good neighbours who now lie scattered in these sacred precincts around them."— Norfolk, by William Dutt (same series and publishers), is also a creditable piece of work, though the introduction is slightly flavoured with unconscious advertisement of the county as a resort." It would have been better if the author, who is quite as keen a naturalist and as appreciative of natural features as Mr. Dewar, and therefore well fitted to deal with such an attrac- tive region as Norfolk is, had taken Mr. Stevenson's admirable preface to" The Birds of Norfolk" as a model when dealing with the characteristics of the county. His division into the Breck, Fen, Broad, Meal Marsh, and enclosed districts forms the best starting- point for informing the traveller, sportsman, naturalist, or antiquary. But the book is well arranged, full of information of all kinds, and very pleasantly written. As an itinerary and guide, it is practically useful. When local tradition or past history is given it is given fully, and in an interesting and quotable form. The chapter on Yarmouth, for instance, has a tall account of the old "beach companies," whose curious look- out places, like windmill towers with no sails, once formed the most striking features of the shore. They were like the Florida wreckers, using the word in its inoffensive sense. Their business was to "salve" or aid cargo-ships which got into trouble on the numerous sands. So many did get into trouble that it was a good and flourishing business. But all these " salvage " enterprises have a smack of piracy and brigandage about them, just flavour- ing the legal status given them. Thus even on the Thames any one is at liberty to board a barge having only one man on board, and to demand pay from the owners for this unasked assistance. At Yarmouth, "when the burning of a flare, the soaring of a rocket, or the booming of a gun announced to the beach companies' watchers that a ship had struck on a shoal," the members of the beach companies were instantly roused from bed, and "within a hundred yards of each other the rival societies would strive with might and main to get the yawls afloat, and when the swift- sailing boats were beyond the coast-surf a strenuously contested race would ensue. The first man to lay hands on the endangered vessel would probably win for his crew the prize, the master generally engaging the services of the first arrivals." There is something rather piratical about the whole proceedings; one cannot help thinking that prayers for fine weather were unpopular in the companies' "courts," as their club- rooms were called. We can add to Mr. Dutt's marine anecdotes. Off the coast there is a most unpleasant channel called the "Gat." There were two families of "Gat pilots," natural enemies, who competed for business for some generations. At last a wise man arose among them who arranged that the families should henceforth intermarry. By a family compact this was arranged, the two eligible pairs of the moment setting the example. Thenceforth there was no competition. In addition to good chapters on the broads, coast marshes, antiquities, botany, birds, roads, and sport of Norfolk, the book contains a useful guide to the Norfolk "Hinterland," the country round Thetford, where warrens and heaths and flints abound, a very little known and interesting region. There are many maps, and a concise gazetteer of towns and villages. The source of a quotation of nearly a page describing the coast and marshes of Salthouse and Cley is not credited to the Spectator, in which it appeared, nor are the names of authors and books from which matter is borrowed usually stated.
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