HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS IN WILTSHIRE.*
EVERY county in England has fine old churches and houses for those who care to seek them, but few counties possess so rich a store as Wiltshire. Mr. Edward Hutton, who has written the attractive now volume of the "Highways and Byways" series, and Miss Eriehsen, who has illustrated it with many charming sketches, may be envied their good luck in having—in the days before the war --to spend many weeks in perambulating Wiltshire roads and hunting out the delightful villages and manor-houses with which the county abounds. The Wiltshire towns are in themselves remarkable. Salisbury of course stands by itself, with its all too perfect Cathedral, its Bishop's Palace, and its ancient gates. But, besides that city, there are Devizes and Marlborough, Crieklade and Malmesbury, Chipponham, Caine, and Bradford-on-Avon, each of which might almost inspire a volume to itself. In Marl- borough, for example, the old house which forms the nucleus of the great school was built for Lord Seymour just before the Restoration by Webb after a design by Inigo Jones. With the Seymour heiress it went to that Sir Hugh Smithson who styled himself Percy and - was made Earl of Northumberland. The Smithsons did not want the house, and let it to a Mr. Cotterell, who made it an inn famous among all travellers on the Bath road. It was hore, in tho old castle house turned inn, that Pitt the Elder stayed in 1767 when he was laid up with gout. " Foot- men and grooms dressed in his family livery filled the whole inn, though one of the largest in England, and swarmed in the streets of the little town. The truth was that the invalid had insisted that during his stay all the waiters and stable-boys of the castle should wear his livery." The Castle Inn was closed in 1843, and was soon afterwards acquired by the Rev. Charles Plater for his new Marlborough College. Malmesbury, again, with the frag- ment of its groat Abbey church and its Tudor market-cross, and Cricklade, with its Roman and Saxon memories and its stately church dedicated to St. Sampson, are profoundly interesting old towns. The picturesque villages, with names like Lydiard Millicent or Norton Havant or Teffont Ewyas that are rich in historical traditions, and the great country-houses like Bowood and Wilton, Longleat and Longford Castle, those stupendous prehistoric monu- ments, Stonehenge and Avebury, and the ruined castles and abbeys over which Mr. Hutton laments the passing of the old faith, are all excellent material for such a volume as this, and the author and illustrator have both used their opportunities well. Mr. Hutton has taken pains with his historical references and his architectural descriptions, and does not forget to point out that our great Sir Christopher Wren was a Wiltshireman. His personal bias against Anglicans and Puritans is at first amusing, but becomes a little tedious when it is introduced quite needlessly into almost every chapter.
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