MR. J. J. HISSEY'S "TOUR IN A PHAETON." MR. HISSEY'S
discoveries in English scenery are appreciated by a large circle of readers. In his present volume he shows that the strangely neglected scenery of the Eastern Counties is full of beauty and interest. The general plan of his holiday tour was to drive to Yarmouth, thence northward on to Cromer through the district of the Broads, returning home through the centre of the three counties by a route to be decided upon each day as he proceeded. He admits that he was more delighted by the picturesque " bits " he was " ever and again " coming upon, because he was hardly prepared for so much sylvan beauty in a land generally presumed to be devoid of scenic attraction. His: first day's stage brought him to the • A Tour in a Phaeton through the Eastern Counties. By James John Riney. London: Richard Bentley and Son. 1889. Langdon Hills, and the view from them, now so little known, has often been described by travellers of the last century. Arthur Young declared that no other view could exceed it, " unless that which Hannibal exhibited to his disconsolate troops when he bade them behold the glories of the Italian plains." Mr. Hissey does not go quite so far as this, but he notices with emphasis that the "popular and deservedly far- famed " view from Richmond Hill is less grand than the one which Young praised so unreservedly.
We have no mind to follow this pleasant writer through the rest of his drive. His enthusiasm for old farmsteads, old inns, and old manor-houses is boundless. So is the admiration which he feels for Nature unadorned. Yet it is easy to see that there are more blessings in the rail- roads which he flouts than are dreamt of in his rural optimism. But this is a point which has been discussed more than enough. And although Mr. Hissey quotes from Mr. Ruskin's atrociously atrabilions letter on railways, he does so because it makes his own feeble protests against their ugliness seem like milk-and-water. Another point on which a devil's advocate might have more to say than Mr. Hissey would care to hear, is the privilege which a Londoner enjoys of tasting the " grace and tender beauty of the young summer " within a six-mile radius of Charing Cross. Charming, again, as Mr. Hissey's descriptions are of the wholesome food and clear nut- -brown ale which he found in his beloved country hostelries, they do not shake our belief that better can be got, and as cheaply, in " the dusty streets and smoke-stained houses " of London.
Mr. Hissey makes no pretence of being an experienced farmer or sportsman, so he will smile, we trust, at the following mistake which he has made. He is great at epitaphs, and, as a rule, prefers the quaint originals to the more modern renderings. " Let us take," he says, " as an instance of the spoiling of the old, the much-quoted line that appears in Sterne's Sentimental Tourney : The Lord tempers the wind to the shorn lamb.' This surely is no improvement upon the original : ' To the close-shorne sheepe, God giveth winde by measure.' Sterne, in appropriating this line, strangely overlooked the fact that lambs are not shorn, though sheep are." Is it to be supposed, then, that vendors of "lambs- wool " are dishonest ? At Watton, in Norfolk, Mr. Hissey noticed an old clock-tower which bore the date of 1679. On it was a carved rebus, a hare and a tun, which he interpreted Hareton, but the name of the town was undoubtedly Watton. He begged an explanation of the puzzling rebus from a -passer-by, who happened to be a farmer of the old-fashioned sort. " Yes," he said; "that stands for the name of the town. A wat and a tun ; Watton, you see !" This was just what Mr. Hissey failed to do. He remarked that the animal looked uncommonly like a hare, and that he had never heard of a " wat" before. " Well now, to think of that !" responded the farmer; " we calls hares wats in these parts." We are grateful to Mr. Hissey for the derivation, and will venture to remind him of two lines in Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis:— "By this, poor Wat, far off upon a hill, Stands on his hinder legs with listening ear."
-Why one puss should be called by the diminutive of Walter, and the other by that of Thomas, is a nut too hard for us to crack. We confess, too, that we do not dare to receive or reject the derivation which Mr. Hissey supplies for " holy- stones," from an old work which he came across at his hotel in Yarmouth. They were originally, he reports, the broken fragments of Yarmouth gravestones, employed by the sailors
of the Commonwealth to scrub the decks of vessels with. But we have a strong impression that the friable sandstones thus used were called " holy," because sailors are on their knees when they use them. On the hall-table at an excellent inn at 3Ialesworth, our tourist noticed a great ram's horn, with a silver top, and charged with snuff. He remarks, as if surprised, that the habit of taking tobacco thus had not gone entirely out of fashion,—at least, in some parts of Suffolk. There is a similar box at an excellent restaurant in Beak Street, W.
Mr. Hissey has written admirable descriptions of so many places of interest in Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk, that it is difficult to select any one in particular as a specimen of his powers. Here, however, is what he calls "another even more effective peep of a place " which is pleasantly situated, like Bungay
"As seen from the riverside below, from near to the first bridge which crosses the Waveney, on the road to Yarmouth, the town of Bowles makes a most romantic picture, well composed and rich in colour. I wonder whether any artist has ever yet come and painted this. Over all stands the grey church-tower, dominating the whole town, the very expression in stone of the ancient ecclesiastical supremacy ; gathered round this are the uneven- roofed, red-tiled houses, then comes a mingling of quaint waterside buildings, trees, and different sorts of sailing craft (from the ' Giant of Norfolk,' a trading wherry, to a diminutive canoe) ; a bright green meadow constitutes the foreground. The changeful outlines of the buildings, the contrasting colours of the red roofs with the solemn grey of the church, and the pale blue smoke losing itself in a mystery of half-tints, the grey and green of the outbuildings and riverside trees, the gleaming and sparkling of the water, and the many hues of the various craft idly afloat thereon, with the fresh green of the foreground meadow, made a subject worthy of the brush of Turner."
From the list of illustrations three may be selected for especial praise,—namely, Layer Barney, Kentwell Hall, and Greenstead Church. For a good general account of the tour, to which these illustrations lend an interest, we are content to take the author's own. It is modest and straightforward, and gives the reader very fairly an idea of what Mr. Hissey attempted to do. We have only to add that, in our judgment, his attempt has been crowned with complete success
Sir Thomas Browne, I think it was, who stated that the best way of all to travel (though I cannot quite agree with him) was to journey by book, seated comfortably in an easy arm-chair. Still, if not the best way, it is one by no means to be despised. I can only trust, you, kind reader, may, from reading this simple unvarnished account of our wanderings, have derived some small share of the great enjoyment that such wanderings gave to us. No words, least of all any words from my poor pen, can convey the delightful experiences and vivid impressions of our journey. But still, I have done my best to bring before you pictures of what we saw. Pictures of ruined abbeys, grey with years, of ancient churches, with their curious brasses and quaint altar- tombs ; of moated manor-houses, raised in a time when truly every man's house was his castle, rich in legends most of these ; of picturesque rambling farmsteads, cosy cottages ; and last, but not least, of all these reminders of the days that are vanished, the many charming old-time coaching hostelries, that even in this nineteenth century of steam-and-iron horses, still, as erstwhile, open their hospitable doors to the traveller by road, and, what is much more to the point, make him exceedingly comfortable."
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