N O American, complexly speaking, finds himself in England for the first time, unless he is one of those many Americans who are not of English extraction. It is probable, rather, that on his arrival, if he has not yet visited the country, he has that sense of having been there before which a simpler psychology than ours used to make much of without making anything of. His English ancestors who really were once there stir within him, and his American forefathers, who were nourished on the history

T HE weather, on the morning we left Plymouth, was at once cloudy and fair, and chilly and warm, as it can be only in England. It ended by cheering up, if not quite clearing up, and from time to time the sun shone so brightly into our railway carriage that we said it would have been absurd to supplement it with the hot-water foot-warmer which, in many trains, still embodies the English notion of car-heating. The sun shone even more brightly outside, and lay in patches much larger than our compar

T HE American who goes to England as part of the invasion which we have lately heard so much of must constantly be vexed at finding the Romans have been pretty well everywhere before him. He might not mind the Saxons, the Danes, the Normans so much, or the transitory Phœnicians, and, of course, he could have no quarrel with the Cymri, who were there from the beginning, and formed a sort of subsoil in which conquering races successively rooted and flourished; but it is hard to have the Romans alw

T HERE were so many pleasing places within easy reach of Bath that it was hard to choose among them, and Bath itself was so constantly pleasing that it was a serious loss to leave it for a day, for an hour. I do not know, now, why we should have gone first, when we gathered force to break the charm, to Bradford-on-Avon. If we did not go first to Wells it was perhaps because we balanced the merits of an eighth-century Saxon Chapel against those of a twelfth-century Cathedral, and felt that the ch

E VEN the local guide-book, which is necessarily optimistic, owns that the railroad service between Bath and Wells leaves something to be desired. The distance is twenty miles, and you can make it by the Great Western in something over two hours, but if you are pressed for time, the Somerset and Dorset line will carry you in two. As we were nationally in a hurry, though personally we had time to spare, we went and came by this line, mostly in a sort of vague rain, which favored the blossoming of

W E left Bath on the afternoon of a day which remained behind us in doubt whether it was sunny or rainy; but probably the night solved its doubt in favor of rain. It was the next to the last day of March, and thoughtful friends had warned us to be very careful not to travel during the impending Bank holidays, which would be worse than usual (all Bank holidays being bad for polite travellers), because they would also be Easter holidays. We were very willing to heed this counsel, but for one reaso

H OW long the pretty town, or summer city, of Folkestone on the southeastern shore of Kent has been a favorite English watering-place, I am not ready to say; but I think probably a great while. Very likely the ancient Britons did not resort to it much; but there are the remains of Roman fortifications on the downs behind the town, known as Cæsar’s camp, and though Cæsar is now said not to have known of camping there, other Roman soldiers there must have been, who could have come down from the pl

D OVER is a place which looks its history as little as any famous town I know. It lies smutched with smoke, along the shore, and it is as commonplace as some worthy town of our own which has grown to like effect in as many decades as Dover has taken centuries. The difference in favor of Dover is that when at last you get outside of it, you are upon the same circle of downs that backs Folkestone, and on the top of one of them you are overawed by the very noble castle, which too few people, who kn

T HE friendly gentleman in our railway carriage who was good enough to care for my interest in the landscape between London and Oxford (I began to express it as soon as we got by a very broad, bad smell waiting our train, midway, in the region of some sort of chemical works) said he was going to Oxford for the Eights. Then we knew that we were going there for the Eights, too, though as to what the Eights are I have never been able to be explicit with myself to this day, beyond the general fact t

B ECAUSE Chester is the handiest piece of English antiquity for new Americans to try their infant teeth on, I had fancied myself avoiding it as unworthy my greater maturity. I had not now landed in Liverpool, and as often as I had hitherto landed there before, I had proudly disobeyed the charge of more imperfectly travelled friends to be sure and break the run to London at Chester, for there was nothing like it in all England. Having indulged my haughty spirit for nearly half a century, one of t

F ROM the 10th to the 20th of July the heat was as great in London as the nerves ever register in New York. It was much more continuous, for our heat seldom lasts a week, and there it lasted nearly a fortnight, with a peculiar closeness from the damp and thickness from the smoke. That was why we left London, and went to Great Malvern, for a little respite. Our run was through a country which frankly confessed a long drouth, such as parches the fields at home in exceptional summers. Rain had not

W E made Worcester what amends we could for refusing to stop the night in her picturesque old inn, so powerfully smelling of stable, by going an afternoon from Malvern to see her fabric of the Royal Worcester ware which some people may think she is named for. Really, however, she was called Wygraster, Wyrcester Wearcester, Wureter, and Hooster, long before porcelain was heard of. In times quite prehistoric the Cornuvíí dwelt there in dug-outs, or huts, of “wottle-and-dab,” the dab being probably

G REAT BRINGTON is the name of the village neighborhood clustering about the church where, under the floor of the nave, the great-great-grandfather of George Washington lies buried. Little Brington is the village neighborhood, hardly separated from the other, where the Washington family dwelt in a house granted them by their cousin, Earl Spencer, when the events of the Civil War drove them from their ancestral place at Sulgrave. To reach the Bringtons from London you must first go to Northampton