Two crucial things have happened, are happening in England. The
motor-car has penetrated the isolation of the country. Ras in tube has a new meaning : the country is part of the town. Our roads are the best in the world: but they become streets. They have a picotee edging of dwellings, booths, shacks, garages, oil-pumps, advertisements, kerbs and the rest, that ape the town and disguiSe the country. The other event is the disappearance of the county landowner, who is rich enough to cultivate beauty, to resist " develop- ment " so called. He may have been an anachronism, even in his heyday ; but he was all automatic preserver in most departments of country life. lie lowered rents when times were bad. He kept fences, ditches, outbuildings and to a less extent, cottages and farm houses in repair. His house and gardens, his parks, his farms, his woods and hedges made and sustained historic beauty. He is gone. The cumulative effect of the wound inflicted by Sir William Harcourt spells his demise as it national institution.
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