Morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven [Conn.]) 1848-1894, 1893-04-22
wAKEMAN,S wANDERINGs.

English Villages and Their Folk
The Poet Travellers Wizard Pen
Still Flashing to View MasterfuI
Pictures of Rural England-Won-
drous Journeyings Into the Past,
Splendid Pages of History Re
opened, and the Immortals Brought
From Wraithland TO Walk Beside
You Where once They Dwelt-GIo-
rious Groupings and sylvan Scenes.
LONDON, April 10.
Tothe Editor of the JOURNAL AND COURIER:
In my preceding article on English vii
lagos and their folk 1 gave some account
of seven English villages, and these in
merest outline. Seven hundred Is truly
nearer the number 1 have personally visi-
ted. Each one could furnish through leis
urely study, for brush or pen, abundant
material for a winsome volume.
Some writers 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 stacks
hung like a 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 sounde; that commercial
England with hard and cruel hand had eff
faced almost the last vestige of the erst
sweet and charming countrysides; and
that brick and iron, stone aud steel, coal
and Brummagen, varied now and then by
nobemsn's demesne or gentleman's seat,
were the characteristic features of an Eng
lish landscape.
AS goodly a proportion of English as
American people have come to accept this
as true. But it is astoundiugly false, as
any one who will really saunter, not rush,
| about England may know. Books are
largely responsible for this. English fc-
ton, like American fiction, of from half
| century to a 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 de-
gree, what Shakespeare was to the Eliza
bethan-was done, mastership in this
school of delineation seemed to cease.
Neither America nor England has since
produced lasting work of fiction upon
rural scenes and lowly folk. Novelists
have wallowed in altruism, psychological
phenomena, subtleties of crime and iti
detection, hideous salaoiousness, positive
and comparative religion the heroics of ag
nosticism and infdelity and in the shred
ded and bsdraggled warp and woof oi
ultra intense metropolitan life. So those
who rely on intelligent fiction to reflect re
ality have felt that the English village and
its folk had surely passed away.
Again, the great world of activities hai
come constantly to intelligent attention
through the press, the reviews and through
statistical volumes, largely to the exclusion
of the great underlying world Of fact and
sentiment. In America the stupendoul
affairs and progress of our great citie:
have almost obliterated the memory o!
| some of the sweetest old moods In all thu
| world-the historic and beautiful hsmleti
| of New England, of the eastern and ever
of the southern and middle states. Ye
they are all just as they once were, pret
tier and tenderer for their pensiveness ant
increasing age. Here, similarly. every
thing is London, Leeds, Birmingham
Manchester, Liverpool, Hull, and that hos
| of practically new manufacturing town
and cities of Yorkshire and Lancashire.
The American commercial mind and tn
English commercial mind have heard TO
quarter of century of naught else thai
their ingots and spindles, pottery ant
looms, fabrics and ships, lock-outs ant
| walk outs, depression and expansion ant
their tremendous trade superlstives o
every hard and harassing description.
, But the material and literary fact still
, remains that all the thousands of ancien
. English villages, and with not hal
hundred exceptions, are here just as the.
were at the beginning of the century
, and just as we have poured over then
in the best old works of English fiction
Not only this, but hundreds of moderl
, villages with winsome olden arehitectur
: in hsbiliment of Elizabethan and evel
, | earlier Tudor times, enriched with luxuri
| ous parking and intelligent Horticulture
, and windows filed with ruddy Engltsl
faces, have been added to the mossier olde'
| stock.
Even in the congested districts of Ian
cashire, Yorkshire, northern Warwick
shire, Staffordshire aud Shropshire, nc
| an ancient village has passed from sight
{ cave where town or city has grown with
+ In and around It,; and, where factor
3 towns are 90 thick that clusters of chin
t ney stacks crowd every acre of the hor
D zon like giant spears above some might
8 encircling camp, there between still stan
d the ancient hamlets, more witching fo
{ the grimy fellowship of trade; an enc