The Lee County journal. (Leesburg, Ga.) 1904-19??, 1907-11-29


is evidence Of a smashing blow VITA
a club, losses it lightly away as The
relic Of an ancient Briton age before
Danish raiding or Naseby fight. Bran
dishing an obnormally huge thigh
bone, he argues solemnly that there
must have been giants in those days,
and after playing idly with a string OF
vertebrae and clinking shoulder
blades and skulls with his candlestick,
he warns his auditors against cudgel-
ling their brains needlessly and sup
plies them with a plausible theory
that the monks in charging the an
cient shrine ran against a prehistoric
burial ground and decently reinforced
the bones of between 10000 and 40
O0O warriors in a consecrated crypt.
1t is GROWERS quest law" delivered
in sepulchral tones without snatch of
melody or stoop of liquor but as bit
of cold realism it is as startling as the
gravediggers' saturnine humor beside
Ophelias grave, and the visitors with
their tallow dips follow him out of
the charnel house-one of three in the
kingdom-with a feeling that they
will never have a stranger experience
in England
Past and present jostle each other
at every turn as the explorer saunters
or rides through Northampton. The
old Roman road points straight as an
arrow for Kilsby, through which hun
dreds of trains are trundling daily
From Barrow Hill, where thousands
of Roman soldiers were encamped,
brisk walker tramps through busting,
workaday Daventry, and cutting
across country with the help of a
compass finds himself out of the
world and in a delightful sleepy hol-
low at Dodford, where brooks are
singing in front of cottages to the ac-
compartment of a splashing mill
wheel and the village church is en-
powered in sylvan beauty. At Ged-
dington is Queen Eleanor's Cross in
the centre of deserted village, at
Drayton and Lilford are enlarged and
glorified manor houses with fifteenth
or seventeenth century gables and
windows; a few heaps of stone and
the burrows of the moat mark the
scene Of Mary Stuart's trial and death,
and at Naseby, where Cavalier and
Roundhead held their fateful tourna-
ment, the high rolling heath, covered
with gorse and bramble, has been con-
verified into a sheep walk. The monks
preaching cross at Brington is the
background for swarm of American
tourists, posed by an amateur phOtOg-
rapher; and over against Althorp,
where Lord Spencer has twice mar
rowly escaped the responsibilities of
the Premiership, stands the crumb-
ling gateway of Holdenby house,
where Charles l. was a prisoner in
his own house after Naseby; and
where once was court with intrigu-
ing retainers and psalm singing
guards there is now a score of agri-
cultural laborers on Lord Annaly's es-
tate, with the frs in the rector's spin
ney whispering Of the glories and the
tragedies of the past At Wellington
ough, where old time royalties once
took the cure, the medicinal water
now goes into a pungent ale; and at
Barnwell the walls of a Norman cas-
tie, with round towers at the corners,
enclose quadrangle of smooth turf
with a line of netting across it. 1t is
an ideal tennis court with ancient
masonry as a backstOp for careless
service and with dungeons in the bas-
tons as hiding places for balls and
rackets
Architectural styles of every period,
traditions Of all the monastic orders
and famous reigns, and sumptuous
country houses, like Castle Ashby,
with stately avenues of elms or
clumps of old oaks, can be sampled in
the explorers walks or rides. Every
where, as ne goes over the high pla-
teau WindsWept as te Cotswold hills
or the Wiltshire downs, he finds
quaint memorials of the past and
strange adaptations of new life to old
conditions. Everywhere will be broad
sweeps of billOwy meadow rolling in
green sea ON verdure toward the blue
mi5ts of the horizon In the creases
of the hills, and sometimes, as at
Cold Ashby, high among them will be
struggling villages, with stone faced
cottages behind high hedgerows;
and here and there will be a mediae-
val manor house with mullioned win
dows and game preserves alive with
rabbits and birds These are the
tranquil vistas of rural England,
with artistic grouping of trees in the
meadows, and with that perfection Of
landscape gardening in the planning
and upkeeD Of great estates which