5 JULY 1930, Page 18

OLD ENGLAND.

You cannot do any work in rural England without unearthing evidence of historic continuity. In reconditioning one old Herefordshire bridge was found a bronze token of the date 1201 ; and by the same place were discovered signs of a Roman ford. Our counties are " fathoms deep in history " ; and when we destroy the old, we rebuff more centuries than we wot of. It is surely a debt we owe to children who suffer from a hurried age of material—and often stucco—novelties, that this history should be made a living part of national education. It is the right foundation even for the aesthetic education that begins to hind its place. This bridge preserving guild grows instinctively to understand the true canons of art.