COUNTRY LIFE
THE art of local history lost its most able exponent when Mr. Reginald Hine died at Hitchin on the eve of Easter. He was on the way to finish a full-dress history of Hertfordshire, which would have been, perhaps will be, a standard work. In spite of his voluminous knowledge of the past, he had a happy gift of combing the memories, as well as the records, of did, and especially of eccentric characters. His large volume of . Hitchin Worthies may be ranked even with the Worthies of Old Fuller, who incidentally continually insisted on the salubrity of Hertfordshire. ,The accounts of the notorious twins and poachers who continually baffled the magistrates, and of the yet more notorious Alington, who owned what is now a spacious hotel at Letchworth, are tales yet racier than any in Fuller's list. Companions in these volumes are men—Lucases, Tukes and the rest really distinguished in art and letters and indeed in natural history, several
of them belonging to the Society of Friends, very strongly entrenched in Hitchin. It is seldom that a historian so learned in archaeology and archi- tecture so successfully pursues " the proper study of mankind." On many accounts Mr. Hine is irreplaceable in the county.
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