A JOYOUS TRAVELLER.*

THE English have ever been travellers. The instinct which drove Angles and Saxons from their own bleak shores "by way of the whales" across the storm-ridden German Ocean to the scarcely less bleak shores of Britain—which drew' the Northmen southward until they cast anchor in the blue waters of the Ionian Sea—has continued throughout the centuries; and is still a compelling force among us to-day. Already lathe fourteenth century Englishmen were to be found 'everywhere within the boundaries of the then known world, trading, tiLytgyhrt anotsBrticat i.nda.Berk-fatiiitLarcso.E;:i6i.ncetia t. With Illastra• travelling, fighting; their shipping was in every port upon river and sea, "and all the countries held and called our sovereign the King of the sea." To this passionate love of roving Gower alludes. "The mones disposition," 'which makes wanderers of men born beneath her influence, " is set," he says, "upon Britaigne,

Which now is aimed Engelonde, For they travaile in every lends."

Those who perforce stayed at home travelled at second hand, and the translation of Sir John Mandeville's Travels achieved a popularity that would have rejoiced the heart of a modern publisher. It ran into no fewer than twenty-five editions during the fifteenth century, and until recent years the pseudo-knight has stood as the prototype of the roving Englishman who sets down for the benefit of the =travelled public all that he has seen, with—occasionally—things that he Lea not seen. "That nation are curious enough that they may know and tell the wonders they have seen," remarks an old-time historian ; and one cannot but smile at the persistence of both traits when one remembers the crop of "travel"

books which every publishing season produces. . • •

With some we might comfortably, dispense ; others, like that under review, we welcome, not only for the pleasure it affords us, but as supplying a real want. The .county of Berkshire, which Messrs. Macmillan have just added to their "Highways and Byways" Series, has long needed a sympa- thetic chronicler ; and though Mr. Vincent does not pretend to exhaust his subject—indeed, it would be impossible adequately to treat the whole of the county within the limits of one small volume—he has given us a delightful record of sunny bicycle rides and river excursions, varied by reminiscences literary, historical, and personal, and penetrated by the writer's very attractive personality.

Mr. Vincent is a genuine traveller; he does not linger beside the glancing streams which cut themselves such deep channels in the chalkland ; nor, save when he climbs to the Ridgeway, does he tread the ancient greenways that are so characteristic a feature of this part of Wessex. With the exception of Windsor, to which he devotes a whole chapter, he hastens on from village to village according as his some. what capricious fancy prompts him, leaving unvisited whole tracts of country. Among these we may mention Newbury, to which he refers incidentally in the chapter on the part Berkshire played in the Civil War, and the lovely Lambourne Valley, now threaded by a light railway, the little plodding trains of which serve but to heighten the impression of remoteness produced on,the solitary tourist. Notwithstanding these omissions, however, we are well content to glide down the slipping river, and to travel along the roads that stretch like white ribbons across down and vale, in company with Mr. Vincent, who informs all that he sees with his own joyous temper, and gossips of men and things in a spirit so frank and candid, yet so free withal from malice, that he would be a dull soul indeed who failed to catch the infection of his gaiety. Besides the light-heartedness to which he confesses in his preface, the writer brings to his task literary acquire- ments of no mean order, a genuine love for the county of his adoption, an eye for the larger effects of Nature, and a happy ease of style. Here is a thumbnail sketch of the "stripling Thames" between Tadpole and Newbridge on an August evens....— "The river was low, the sun so scorchingly hot that when it sank in the West one hardly knew whether to rejoice least in the departure of the heat or in the unspeakable beauty of the long reaches of water between the reeds and the flags, as they blushed under the last kisses of the sun. Nay, they did more than blush. No opal, not even the noble opal' which 'exhibits brilliant and changeable reflections of green, blue, yellow and red,' ever shone with such varied and evasive glow. All too quickly the light faded. Then from the marshland on either side rose herons complaining hoarsely that their sanctuary was invaded in the night season, and wild ducks innumerable started from the reeds with clanging wings and circled round us high in the air in the half darkness."

Mr. 'Vincent loves the river. One of the' pleasantest chapters in the book is that which tells the story of his journey by boat down the classic waterway 'from Oxford to 'Windsor, when, letting wind' and stream work for him, be has leisure to notice the "whitening of the willows, the shivering of the aspen—the Welsh call its foliage leaves of

gills tongues he ariowy flight of the many hued and freqftent kingfishers; the graceful outline' of an old time . ,

bridge." He entertains us now with a lively remiaisoence of his undergraduate days, now with a receipt of Izank Walton for the cooking of chub, now with a biography in brief of Jethro Tell (to whom modern agriculturists owe more than perhaps they are aware of), as we drift past Sinodun, beneath the heights of Pangbonrne and through Cookbam Lock,— names that evoke a hundred fragrant memories of level meadows screened by willow', through which the broken sunlight filters, of green hillsides and cool woods rising tier above tier in ordered etillness, with, ever moving onward, ohne Hast, ohne Bast, the singing, sunlit river. To those interested in psychic lere we commend the terrible story, and its sequel, of Bisham Abbey. That the country folk believe the wicked Lady Hoby still "walks" in expiation of her crime the present writer can attest. But the Abbey has other, less grim associations. Originally a preceptor), of the Knights Tempters, it was settled by Henry VIII. as a " mollifier " on Anne of Cleves, who exchanged it for Sir Philip Hoby's house in Kent. The sisters of Lady Hoby—not the murderess—were Lady Bacon and Lady Cecil, under whose guardianship the Princess Elizabeth spent three not unhappy years at Bisham.

Berkshire is thronged with the shades of dead-and-gone historical personages. There is scarcely a townlet or village among those Mr. Vincent visited which has not played its part in the drama Of England. There is scarcely a manor- house or church among those depicted by that clover artist, Mr. Griggs, which is not linked by some famous name to the past. Chief among the shadowy figures, towering high above his fellows, is King Alfred, of whom a contemporary historian writes that if one county more than another can claim him as her own, it is that which "has its name from the wood of Berroc where the box-tree grows most plentifully." He was born at Wantage and died at Faringdon, and, as Mr. Vincent poiats out, local tradition embodied in local names supports the contention that the battle of Ashdown, which freed Wessex from the presence of the Danes, was fought on the bills to the south of the White Horse,—the culminating mass of the chalk ridge that traverses the county from east to west. He has much to say on this subject; indeed, we could have !pared some of the historical disquisitions for a fuller, more appreciative notice of that glorious and " ancient " hill, which is dismissed with a bald statement of facts. Let us not, how- ever, do Mr. Vincent an injustice. He acknowledges the charm of the downs, which to a true Berkshireman are Berk- shire, and his references to them, if cursory, are enthusiastic. "Their fascination," he says," is a thing absolutely sui generic

they attract the newcomer at once. Their deep and springy turf is a delight to the feet of those who tread them ; it is absolutely perfect for the purposes of the horseman ; and the fresh air that sweeps over it carries the faint fragrance of hundreds of tiny flowers peculiar to the chalk downs." Between Lambourne and Shrivenham the road "runs between Buell precipices of downland as cannot be surpassed. No Northern or Western mountain pass is more lonely; not in Heir Zealand itself is the name of the rabbits more absolutely to be called legion. Before long appears a dark woodland, and soon the turf beside the road is sprinkled with • grey

wethers the last relics of a mighty flock."

On one point we join issue with Mr. Vincent. He writes not only disrespectfully of the Blowing Stone—it were scarcely a heavier crime to write disrespectfully of the Equator—but he writes without knowledge, ascribing its "fictitious value" to Sir Walter Scott. The present writer remembers hearing the host of the Blowing Stone Inn produce from the stone a deep-mouthed ringing boom that could be and was beard five miles away. Space does not permit us to do more than refer to the specimens of dialect which the book contains, the descriptions of the villagers' amusements—they are few enough 1.—the racy criticisms of Berkshire manners and worthies in which the author from time to time indulges. An epitaph and an entry In a village register, however, deserve to be quoted. The first

runs:—

"In the morning I went forth well. Brought back my death, took by a smell. 'Therefore in health always prepare To meet your Lord and Saviour dear."

The entry, which occurs in connexion with the names of two men, John and Richard Gregory, who died May, 1598, is an follow :--" These two men were killed by Quid Gunter. Ganter's sons and ye two Gregories fell together by ye yearee [ears] at footeball. Ould Gunter drewe his dagger and broke booth their heades and they died booths within a fortnight after."

It only remains to add that Mr. Griggs's illustratiods faithfully reproduce the old-world atmosphere of the villages ; his hand has lost none of its cunning, and what higher praise than this can we give him ?