Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. By Brian Vesey-Fitzgerald. (Robert
Hale. 15s.) Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. By Brian Vesey-Fitzgerald. (Robert Hale. 15s.)
THIS volume, by the editor of The County Books series in which it appears, is perhaps the best that has so far been issued. Hamp- shire is one of the largest, and certainly one of the most interesting of our counties ; but it is comparatively little known, lying just outside the convenience of the average London tripper and not within the circle of the Midlands. Hampshire's beauties are not spectacular, her history is deep and long rather than superficially picturesque, and not until the reader has met with such a book as this does he realise what a wealth of both (and much more besides) lie within fifty miles' radius of Winchester. The county that gave us Dickens and Jane Austen has literary associations enough for a dozen pilgrimages ; here are almost unchanged Charles Kingsley's " Eversley," White's " Selborne," Tennyson's " Farringford," and the footsteps of Southey, Shelley, Keats, Hudson, Cobbett, Collins, Stevenson, Scott, Hardy. In Hampshire are the cradle of cricket and the place where King Canute contended with the tides. Here are the Round Table of King Arthur and the graves of six Saxon kings ; here are wide downs, vast forests, lovely villages and the finest trout-fishing in the world: also this year's Football League Champions. A Hampshire man might suppose Hampshire lacks nothing, and she is fortunate in having Mr. Vesey-Fitzgerald for a chronicler.
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