The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1893-04-23
WAKENAN'S WANDERINCS.
Some Facts About English Villages and
Their FOlk---H.

The Poet Travellers Wizard Pen
Still Flashing to View Masterful
Pictures of Rural Wonder
Gus Journeying into the Past, Splen-
did Pages of History Reopened, and
the Immortals Brought from Wrath
land to Walk Beside You Where Once
They Dwelt-Glorious Groupings
and Sylvan Scenes.
Copyright 1881
London, April 10-In my preceding ar
ticle on English villages and their folk, |
gave some account of seven English vii
lagos, and these in merest outline. Seven
hundred is truly nearer the number l
have personally visited. Each one could
furnish through leisurely study for
brush or pen, abundant material for a
winsOme volume.
Some writer's would have US believe that
English villages were things of the past
that rural England had completely gone
to decay; that the smoke of factory
hung like pail over the remains of all
that is mellow and old and good; that the
thunders Of the mills had drowned all the
dear old country sounds; that CONNER
cial England with hard and cruel hand
had effaced almost the last Vestige of the
erst sweet and charming countrysides ;
and that brick and iron, stone and steel.
coal and Brummagem, varied now and
then by nobleman's demesne or gentle
mans seat, were the characteristic feat
ures of an English landscape.
AS gOOdly a proportion of English as
American people have come to accept this
as true. But it is astoundingly false. as
any one who will really saunter, not rush,
about England may know. Books are
largely responsible for this. English fie-
ton, like American fiction, of from half
century to century ago was replete with
pictures of village life and character.
When Charlotte Bronte laid down her
pen, and the labor of George Eliot-who
was to the early Victorian age, at least in
degree, what Shakespeare was to the Eli
zabethan-waS done, mastershiD in this
school of delineation seemed to cease.
Neither America nor England has since
produced a lasting work of fiction upon
rural scenes and lowly folk. Novelists
have wallowed in altruism, psychological
phenomena, subtleties of crime and its de-
lection, hideous salaciousness, positive
and comparative religion, the heroics of
agnosticism and infidelity and in the
shredded and bedraggled warp and wool
OF ultra-intense metropolitan life So
those who rely on intelligent fiction to re-
fleet reality, have felt that the English
village and its folk had surely passed
away.
Again, the great world of activities has
come constantly to intelligent attention,
though the press, the reviews and through
statistical volumes, largely to the exclu-
sion of the underlying world of fact and
sentiment. In America the stupendous
affairs and progress of our great cities
have almost Obliterated the memory of
some of the sweetest old hooks in all the
world-the historic and beautiful hamlets
of New England, of the eastern and even
of the southern and middle states Yet
they are all just as they once We're,
prettier and tenderer for their pensive-
ness and increasing age. Here, similarly,
everything is London, Leeds, Birming-
ham, Manchester, Liverpool, Hull, and
that host of practically n@v manufacture
ingtowns and cities of Yorkshire and
Lancashire.
The American commercial mind and
the English commercial mind have heard
for quarter of a century of naught else
than their ingots and spindles, pottery
and looms, fabrics and ships locx-outs
and walk-outs, depression and expansion
and their tremendous trade superlatives
of every hard and hara Ssng description.
y
remains that all the thousands of ancient,
English villages, and with not half hun
dred exceptions, are here just as they
were at the beginning of the century, and
Just as we have pored over them in the
best old works of English fiction Not
only this, but hundreds of modern villages
with winsome olden architecture in the
habilament of Elizabethan and even
earlier Tudor times enriched with luXuri-
Gus parking and intelligent Horticulture.
and windows filled with ruddy English
faces, have been added to their mossier
olden stock.
Even in the congested districts of Lanca-
shire, Yorkshire, Northern Walwickshire
! SUaffOrdshire and Shropshire, not an an
| cient village has passed from sight. save
where a town or city has grown within
and around it; and where factory towns
are so thick that clusters of chimney
| stacks crowd every acre of the horizon
| like giant spears above some mighty en-
| Circling camp, there between still stand
the ancient hamlets, more witching for the
| grimy fellowship of trade; an endless sol
ace to eye and heart of those who cease
| less toll.
! Therefore when the lively American
! who does England in a week tells US
! that the rural England of literature is no
! more, he tells us what perhaps some HYDE
| travelling salesman has told him, but still
! something which he does not know: and
! when the London literary dilettante falls
! upon and dispOses of rural England in a
! single breezy magazine article or smart
! review, he commits for needed stipend
! of go or E20little short of literary crime.
Such as these and better still all those
! who love the truly beautiful and win
! somely picturesque in any land, without
! seeking QuiXotic quests among political
| and social problems, should certainly pass
! ut least one summer among English vii
/ lagos. Hundreds can be found even along
| the lines of railway. Leaving these at
/ any station, by coach, by trap, upon BIZ
! cycle, or more advantageously and fuller
/ of citation than all, on your own good legs,
| every fine old hedge-bordered highway
will furnish you an astounding revela-
| ton in every half-day's drive or walk
! What wonderous journeyiugs into the
| past are thus afforded. What splendid
! pages of history are thus reopened-for it
| has been in and about English villages
/ rather than in towns that English history
| has been made What challenges are
! prompted TO the great and the immortal
/ to come from their wraithlands and walk
/ beside you where they once dwelt. And
/ how you find that all you knew of books
! has ineNpressibly lacked in the true color