Efighways and Byways of Dorset. By Sir Frederick Treves, Bart.
With Illustrations by Joseph Pennell. (Macmillan and Co. 6s.)—The pen of Sir Frederick Treves and the pencil of Mr. Joseph Pennell make a very powerful combination for dealing with such a subject, and the subject is one which amply repays the labour that is spent upon it. The region began to be interesting at a very early date, for it was the abode of Neo- lithic man, of whom Sir Frederick gives us a charming little sketch ; and as it began so it went on. The Romans came here and left many traces of their sojourn ; in Saxon times it was the abode of notables spiritual and temporal ; it had its part in post- Conquest history ; some of the dramatic incidents of the Civil War belong to it; and it was the scene of the unhappy rebellion of Monmouth. Its present is not less picturesquely represented than the past. Sherborne, with its Abbey and school, Cranborne, Poole, Lyme Regis, the Chesil Beach (which is to the land behind it what the Goodwin, would be if they were within a stone's-throw of the Kentish shore), are some of the interesting localities in which Dorset abounds. Sir Frederick Troves's narrative is full of curious things. We see that he speaks of the various Winter- bornes—there are no less than fourteen in the county—and gives the commonly accepted explanation that the name is derived from the phenomenon of a stream running only in winter. But it has been suggested that the real derivation of this place-name is " Wend- bourne," or river by which Wends lived. As to the illustrations, we venture to think that some of them would have been the better for a little more working. "The Bowling Green, Bingham's Melcombe " (p. 1,021), is an instance. No one would suppose that the black objects in the foreground were bowls. Is it not a sound doctrine that where we have illustrations in the midst of type the distance at which they are to be viewed should be the same as that at which the type is read ? We have been for many years among the admirers of Mr. Pennell's work ; but we must own that he pleases us more in such a book as his "Canterbury Pilgrims" (published in 1885) than he does in the volume now before us.
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