R.A.C. Notice Boards

SINCE the stars are still inaccessible, and there are, apparently, no new worlds to find, it seems a pity that we should not be allowed to delight in little discoveries and explorations.

We have suffered the posters ; we have spared the bill-stickers' lives, but are we now going to submit, without protest, to the labelling of our villages ?

The R.A.C. proposes, for the convenience of motorists, to erect notice boards, on which will be printed the principal items of interest in the towns and villages. These boards will necessarily be large, and the print bold, for motors travel swiftly in these days. So we shall no longer have the joy of wandering into a church and discovering, for our private joy, an epitaph like this :—

" Near this spot are interred the remains of MARY DEAR.

She was charitable without ostentation, And pious without enthusiasm."

Or the interesting remark :— "Here lies Richard Bird, Who left this life

In hope of a better one."

No, in time the notice boards will remark on Miss Dear. Then, since notices beget guides, we shall be told all about Mary and her grandparents and favourite hobbies. We shall be taken to the restored cottage, where once she lived, and shall be disappointed, of course, because we had imagined Mary sleeping under a red roof, with golden lichen, and we shall find instead, a thatch and wire netting to keep the birds from building.

They seem determined to spoil England for us. Soon, we shall not be able to look at a cottage or a church or an old ruin, without being pursued by greedy little children, carrying wilted pansies from some famous grave, and expecting pennies in return.

Surely, too, houses that are always dressed up for visitors will appear as self-conscious as spoilt children. T. E. Browne, when he had bent a bough of may towards him, remarked :— " It bore it in a sort of way,

It bore it very well.. ."

But :—

" With what a toss, with what a swing, The dainty thing Resumed its proper level, And sent me to the devil. .

I know it did—you doubt it ? I turned and saw them whispering about it."

If bray the soon-to-be-labelled villages oaitld send i !traders to the devil : if only the houses could make flees and the golden cocks on the church steeples could rrow their scorn ; then they might still keep. their privacy. Bust even if they did, the tourists would not 'Alec. They would be much too occupied in exclaiming : Ilow very interesting " and " How too sweet ! " to notice any small cottage scowling from under its t \Throw thatch.

There is nothing so joyful as to discover a new place fur oneself. It does not really matter where Shelley pent his infancy, where Wordsworth is buried, or if tufus was killed under this tree or that. If the birds cem to sing more madly, or the bluebells to swing more iotously, if there is a certain distinguishable magic bout certain spots ; then that magic may be enhanced by he knowledge of events that may or may not have gone towards its making ; but it is not 'really relevant. If he R.A.C. has its way, then the birds will be frightened, may, the bluebells will be uprooted and magic will be cattered.

Trippers may be pleasant people enough : the very awil suggests a gaiety, but we have seen what they :we done to Newlands Corner and to Leith Hill.

The truly adventurous will discover their villages ir themselves. They do • not need imagination- 'estroying notice • boards, and it is better that other Jeople should not stray away from the places they have uined already, rather than that the whole of England's green and pleasant land" should suffer jaundice from