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[Illustration: ST. PAUL'S FROM THE RIVER THAMES]


ENGLAND

by

FRANK FOX

Author of "Ramparts of Empire" "Peeps at the British Empire," "Australia
and Oceania"

With 32 Full-Page Illustrations in Colour







London
Adam and Charles Black
1914




AUTHOR'S PREFACE


To bring within the limits of one volume any detailed description of
England--her history, people, landscapes, cities--would be impossible. I
have sought in this book to give an impression of some of the most
"English" features of the land, devoting a little space first to an attempt
to explain the origins of the English people. Thus the English fields and
flowers and trees, the English homes and schools are given far more
attention than English cities, English manufactures; for they are more
peculiar to the land and the people. More markedly than in any superiority
of her material greatness England stands apart from the rest of the world
as the land of green trees and meadows, the land of noble schools and of
sweet homes:

    Green fields of England! wheresoe'er
    Across this watery waste we fare,
    One image at our hearts we bear,
    Green fields of England, everywhere.

    Sweet eyes in England, I must flee
    Past where the waves' last confines be,
    Ere your loved smile I cease to see,
    Sweet eyes in England, dear to me!

    Dear home in England, safe and fast,
    If but in thee my lot lie cast,
    The past shall seem a nothing past
    To thee, dear home, if won at last;
    Dear Home in England, won at last.

That is the cry of an Englishman (Arthur Hugh Clough). On the same
note--the green fields, the dear homes--a sympathetic visitor to England
would shape his impressions on going away.

If, by chance, the reading of this book should whet the appetite for more
about England, or some particular part of the kingdom, there are available
in the same series very many volumes on different counties and different
features of England. To these I would refer the lover or student of England
wishing for closer details. My impression is necessarily a general one;
and it is that of a visitor from one of the overseas Dominions--not the
less interesting, I hope, certainly not the less sympathetic for that
reason.

FRANK FOX.




CONTENTS


CHAPTER I

                                                         PAGE

THE MAKING OF ENGLAND--THE BRITONS AND THE ROMANS           1


CHAPTER II

THE MAKING OF ENGLAND--THE ANGLO-SAXONS AND THE NORMANS    16


CHAPTER III

THE ENGLISH LANDSCAPE AND THE ENGLISH LOVE OF IT           28


CHAPTER IV

THE TRAINING OF YOUNG ENGLAND                              43


CHAPTER V

ENGLAND AT WORK                                            64


CHAPTER VI

ENGLAND AT PLAY                                            81


CHAPTER VII

THE CITIES OF ENGLAND                                     101


CHAPTER VIII

THE RIVERS OF ENGLAND                                     114


CHAPTER IX

ENGLAND'S SHRINES                                         125


CHAPTER X

THE POORER POPULATION                                     137


CHAPTER XI

THE ARTS IN ENGLAND                                       155


CHAPTER XII

POLITICAL LIFE IN ENGLAND                                 171


CHAPTER XIII

THE DEFENCE OF ENGLAND                                    187

INDEX                                                     203




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


1. St. Paul's from the River Thames                     _Frontispiece_

                                                           FACING PAGE

2. The Chalk Cliffs of England                                       1

3. North Side, Canterbury Cathedral                                  8

4. Richmond, Yorkshire                                              17

5. Norman Staircase, King's School, Canterbury                      24

6. A Kent Manor-House and Garden                                    33

7. A Sussex Village                                                 40

8. The Bridge of Sighs, St. John's College, Cambridge               49

9. St. Magdalen Tower and College, Oxford                           56

10. Broad Street, Oxford, looking West                              59

11. Eton Upper School                                               62

12. Houses of Parliament and Westminster Bridge, London             65

13. Harvesting in Herefordshire                                     72

14. Football at Rugby School                                        81

15. Cricket at "Lord's"                                             88

16. Trout-fishing on the Itchen, Hampshire                          97

17. Dean's Yard, Westminster                                       104

18. Sailing Boats on the Serpentine, Hyde Park, London             107

19. Watergate Street, Chester                                      110

20. The River Rother, Sussex                                       115

21. Thames at Richmond, Surrey                                     118

22. Spring by the Thames                                           121

23. Windsor Castle from Fellows' Eyot: Early Spring                124

24. Glastonbury Abbey, Somersetshire                               128

25. Anne Hathaway's Cottage near Stratford-on-Avon                 137

26. Gipsies on a Gloucestershire Common                            144

27. The Tower from the Tower Bridge, looking West                  153

28. Westminster Abbey from the end of the Embankment               160

29. Westminster and the Houses of Parliament                       169

30. Hyde Park, London                                              176

31. Battleships Manoeuvring                                      193

32. Changing the Guard                                             200


[Illustration: THE CHALK CLIFFS OF ENGLAND--THE NEEDLES, ISLE OF WIGHT]




ENGLAND




CHAPTER I

THE MAKING OF ENGLAND--THE BRITONS AND THE ROMANS


When Europe, as it shows on the map to-day, was in the making, some great
force of Nature cut the British Islands off from the mainland. Perhaps it
was the result of a convulsive spasm as Mother Earth took a new wrinkle on
her face. Perhaps it was the steady biting of the Gulf Stream eating away
at chalk cliffs and shingle beds. Whatever the cause, as far back as man
knows the English Channel ran between the mainland of Europe and "a group
of islands off the coast of France"; and the chalk cliffs of the greatest
of these islands faced the newcomer to suggest to the Romans the name of
_Terra Alba_: perhaps to prompt in some admirer of Horace among them a
prophetic fancy that this white land was to make a "white mark" in the
Calendar of History.

Considered geographically, the British Islands, taking the sum of the whole
five thousand or so of them (counting islets), are of slight importance.
Yet a map of the world showing the possessions of Great Britain--the area
over which the people of these islands have spread their sway--shows a
whole continent, large areas of three other continents, and numberless
islands to be British. And when the astonishing disproportion between the
British Islands and the British Empire has been grasped, it can be made the
more astonishing by reducing the British Islands down to England as the
actual centre from which all this greatness has radiated. It is true that
the British Empire is the work of the British people: as the Roman Empire
was of the Italian people and not of Rome alone. But it was in England that
it had its foundation; and the English people made a start with the British
Empire by subduing or coaxing to their domain the Welsh, the Scottish, and
the Irish. Not to England all the glory: but certainly to England the first
glory.

There is at this day a justified resentment shown by Scots and Irish, not
to speak of Welshmen, when "England" is used as a term to embrace the whole
of the British Isles. (Similarly Canadians resent the term "America" being
arrogated by the United States.) A French wit has put very neatly the case
for that resentment by stating that ordinarily an inhabitant of the British
Isles is a British citizen until he does something disgraceful, when he is
identified in the English newspapers as a "Scottish murderer" or an "Irish
thief": but if he does something fine then he is "a gallant Englishman."
That is neat satire, founded on a slight foundation of truth. Very often
"England" is confounded with "Great Britain" when there is discussion of
Imperial greatness. I do not want to come under suspicion of inexactness,
which that confusion of terms shows. But writing of England, and England
alone, it is just to claim at the outset that the actual first beginning of
that great British power which has eclipsed all records of the world was in
England: and it is worth the while to inquire into the causes which made
for the growth of that power. It is necessary, indeed, to make that
inquiry and get to know something of English history before attempting to
look with an understanding eye upon English landscapes, English cities, and
the English people of to-day. The classic painters of the greatest age of
Art used landscape only as the background for portraiture. The human
interest to them was always paramount. And, whether one may or may not go
the whole way with these painters in the appraisement of the relative value
of the human or the natural, clear it is that a human interest heightens
the value of every scene; and there can be no full appreciation of a
country without a knowledge of its history.

"When a noble act is done--perchance in a scene of great natural beauty:
when Leonidas and his three hundred martyrs consume one day in dying, and
the sun and the moon come each and look upon them once in the steep defile
of Thermopylae: when Arnold Winkelried, in the high Alps, under the shadow
of the avalanche, gathers in his side a sheaf of Austrian spears to break
the line for his comrades; are not these heroes entitled to add the beauty
of the scene to the beauty of the deed?" Assuredly "yes" to that question
from Emerson, and assuredly, too, they pay back every day what they have
borrowed, giving to a noble landscape the added charm of its human
association with a