THE NEW COUNTY HISTORIES.
SO far as the scheme of the new county histories is yet made public, it appears that four volumes will be devoted to each county; that a representative Committee, including Lord Salisbury, is to direct their publication; and that the first comity to be dealt with will be Hampshire, which, as the main seat of the government of the author of the Doomsday-book, is perhaps appropriate. We hope that the contents of these volumes will be more satisfactory than those of most county histories. No doubt they will be modelled, to some extent, on the method in which the several districts are treated in "The Encycloptedia Britannica." But we should like to see a strong vein of real history running through them, especially wuere the county has been from time to time invaded by the "drums and tramptings" of domestic war, or, like the Isle of Wight, overrun by fureigu foes. We are certain to find in them a fund of exact local knowledge. It is a form of information in which English country people excel, and as to which their memories are very retentive. The most eager and willing contributors to county history are the inhabitants of the county itself. But the compilers will have at hand two documents of great authority, one as permanent as time, the other an exact transcript of the artificial divisions of the surface of the soil, and incidentally of some of its products. The Normans had no Geological Survey to work with. The records of that Survey give practically the character of the earth's crust all over England. By boring, and by noting the sections and strata through which the wells were sunk
all over the country, the members of the Survey were able to leave a record absolutely permanent of the conditions of soil which affect the production of crops, the output of minerals, and the supply of water. In the Ordnance Survey we have an exact account of all the shapes of fields, all the woods, orchards, and plantations, the sites of farm buildings, and of ancient monuments or historic remains. It is, however, deficient in one great element of interest, affecting the value of the one crop the existence of which it records. It gives no indication of the kind of timber on the wooded ground, or of the date of the formation of the woods and plantations; and no data as to the amount of water in the pools or rivers shown on the map. Earth and water, to which we may add perhaps wood, are after all the three fundamental commodities with which county surveys are concerned. The first is mapped out both on the surface and in sections of depth. Of the dates of afforesting or nature of woodlands the present surveys afford no evidence, though they do show very minutely the extent of land under timber. But water is becoming more and more an important and controlling rural factor in wellbeing, and the supply is now threatened both by the demands made by the towns, and its pollution in the counties. Last year, for example, the exhaustion of the natural waters of Hertfordshire and Kent led to moat serious consequences, and to constant allegations of the presence of wit .r in quan- tities where now it has disappeared. No county record was available to show the normal depth of water in the rivers or the outflow from the springs. It is now, and will be in the future, of the first importance to the rural counties to obtain and keep these records, for making and attesting which there are now ample scientific facilities. It is not a question of "power" to turn machinery, as in the days of the Doomsday- book, when the water-mills were among the items most care- fully noted, but a question keenly affecting the interests of the future inhabitants.
Historical curiosity is perhaps the main ground outside business interests for which county histories are valued. Intelligent interest in the story of the parish, the manor, or the county town steadily grows. With such a consecutive history as our counties show, and when almost every village contains unbroken memorials of the past, churches, crosses, ancient houses, bridges, roads, charities, customs, fairs, and tolls, it would be strange if such inquiries were not suggested and welcomed. There is, however, just a little danger that in recording the past the present may be omitted. It would be a thousand pities if the inquirer of the year 2000 should in these rural annals of the close of the previous century not find an accurate picture of the towns and villages as they stand to-day, as well as of the past.
Something must be added to the maps of the Survey, and the figures, however accurate, of rural statistics, and of the dimensions of buildings, fields, woods, and wastes, if the descriptive part of these works, however brilliantly written, is to give an exact and vivid picture of England of to-day. There are many features, such as the more perishable parts of the villages, old cottage architecture, the picturesque and beautiful barns, windmills, dovecotes, sheds, granaries, and other buildings consecrated to the agriculture of the end of the last century and of the beginning of this, with the in- dustries and trades appertaining to them, the work of the thatcher, the wheelwright, the whitesmith, the basketmaker, moat of which are either passing away or destined to dis- appear.
If we desire to know to-day what the country life of the fourteenth century was like, we have to turn to the illuminations of the " Romance of Alexander " or some other contemporary MS. But we have now at our disposal such a perfect means of preserving the pictorial record of our counties by means of process-pictures from photographs, that the most minute details of the present may be transmitted in a form both beautiful, true, and enduring for the enjoyment and instruction of the future. Twenty years ago the idea of making a permanent record of outdoor scenery, of mills, barns, trees, weirs, and buildings, by means of photography would have provoked a smile. The photographs themselves faded and perished, and the means by which these delicate and instantaneous records of Nature were transmitted to plates of metal,
from which they could be impressed with ink on paper with all the durability and precision of a copper-plate engraving, were unknown. Such is, however, the .case yk-day. And the method, in addition to its truth, is astonishingly cheap. If imagination had constructed an ideal means for the object required it could have pictured none more suitable, or better within the limits of time, coat, and labour available.
Given the use of this process, what are the subjects which should be selected for illustration in county histories ? Cer.
tainly those mentioned above,—the homes of those engaged in the pursuit of our ancient agriculture, and the means and appliances by which it was pursued. The cottages of the Elizabethan period are now fast falling to decay, and though the old cloth halls and excellent timber-built houses, models of country street architecture, are more lasting, they must in time perish. Street scenery, both in villages and in rural towns, should also be photographed. In the latter it perishes and changes with astonishing speed. We would also include plates of the old agricultural implements, and the cattle used to draw them, and the crops. In Suffolk, for instance, the wooden plough with one handle, in parts of Sussex the ox teams with their yokes, in Wiltshire and Gloucestershire the collar-drawn ox-harness should be shown.
Moat counties, or groups of counties, have their own peculiar and justly prized breeds of cattle, horses, sheep, swine, and poultry. While the county still remains the county these must always play an important part in county history, just as the respectiie prices of wool or of corn have from time to time changed the face of rural England. These "works of art" in the form of domestic animals should certainly be known to posterity in some visible form, if only for practical reference and comparison. if we bad such photographs as Mr. Francis Galton has just induced the leading clubs to have taken at shows of prize cattle and horses we could trace the origin of the shire horse exactly, or know to the tenth of an inch to what extent we have im- proved the thoroughbred since the days of the Godolphin Arab. Possibly the time will come when a British Depart. ment of Agriculture will imagine, perhaps justly, that it has found out the universal draught-horse, or the absolutely best non-tuberculous, prolific, butter-and-milk-producing breed of cattle, or that dream of stock-breeders, the perfect pig; and will endeavour to impose this on all counties alike. We can well imagine a public department a century hence entertaining such a conviction, and also the satisfaction of the county Committees in turning to their county histories, and pointing to the size, power, economy, or adaptation to environment of the local animals of the end of the nineteenth century, the Hereford ox, or the Clydesdale horse, or the Suffolk Punch, or the Devon cows, or the Romney Marsh sheep, or the Leicester longwools, as the case may be, depicted in the photographic records of our day.
In addition, we would certainly add photographs of the people themselves. Costume is one of the evidences of character and of the standard of comfort. We would group the old and young, men, women, and children, under the village oak, where there is one, and photograph squire, parson, wives and daughters, school children, gamekeeper, plough- men, blacksmiths, sexton—each and all of them. We tarn now with interest to the meagre old drawings of Chaucer's pilgrims. The modern types of the Canterbury pilgrims al e to be found in every village in England, and will be just as interesting three hundred years hence as the Reeve and the Manciple, the Wife of Bath and the Franklin, are to us to-day.
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