Round about Wiltshire. By A. G. Bradley. (Methuen and Co.
65.)—Mr. Bradley is a most 'entertaining guide, and in this volume his passion for historical wanderings is happily propor- tioned to the interest of particular localities and legends. Much of the attraction of the county is due to its past, its great houses and its great families, so that we follow Mr. Bradley from place to place without effort, scarcely realising how widely he has been ranging and what a variety of subjects he has been discoursing about. He tells us just as much as we want to know about Tom Moore and Richard Jefferies, Wild Dwell and Captain Budd of Winterbourne Bassett. Budd was a great figure in the threshing-machine riots of the "thirties." Wiltshire farming is not what it was a hundred years ago in the days of Continental wars, and here, again, Mr. Bradley makes a pleasant excursion into the records of a great farming family. As one of the family still rents ten thousand acres, we presume he makes both ends meet. It is on record that an ancestor actually sold some wheat at the rate of more than two hundred shillings a quarter. Mr. Bradley handles his materials with judgment, and talks well about them all, and his felicity in narrative is incontestable. He does not trench on Baedeker, and tells us straightly when he is not going to give a word to a place. We think there are few but will rise from a perusal of the volume knowing a great deal more of social and historical Wiltshire than the title suggests. Yet Round about Wiltshire very happily describes the contents, and we can recommend it as quite a fascinating book in itself, and a capital cicerone for any traveller not in a violent hurry.
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