HISTORY AND HOLIDAY.

HOLIDAY-TAKERS may be broadly divided into twc

classes : the class which takes its holiday purely for rest and recreation, and the class which regards the holiday as an opportunity for educ ation as well as recreation. The former class is composed of people to whom the holiday has become the necessary adjunct to successful toil. The latter. of course, numbers breadwinners in its ranks, but is usually recruited from men who either have toiled successfully and are no longer bound to the oar, or who are independent and leave home for mere change of air and scene. The first are generally, but by no means always, stationary holiday- makers ; they fix upon a watering-place or an inland spot, and settle down to the tranquil indulgence of their particular tastes, be it for perfect quiet, or for beauty of scenery, or for a free-and- easy, untrammelled life, or for the gaiety and excitement of a fashionable centre. The second are birds of passage, staying at one place only so long as it attracts them, and it is to these that the combination of history- learning with holiday-making commends itself most particularly, and it has been for them, almost more than for the student proper, that the recent wholesome and charming flood of what may be called holiday historical literature has been poured out. The historical holiday - maker need not go abroad for his recreation, although, it is hardly necessary to say, such trips as that recently taken by English public-school masters in Greece, or that pilgrimage made by a recent writer in the steps of Edward III. in France, or by the author of "High- ways and Byways in Normandy," are but samples from the vast Continental field for exploration. We have at our very doors—almost literally, now that the wheel has become a necessary holiday adjunct—a most interesting choice of happy hunting-grounds. The peculiar charm of these lies in the fact that, despite the vast changes which have been wrought in the social life of rural England, and therefore in much of its aspect, during the time which has elapsed since what can fairly be called historical events occurred, so much remains actually but little altered.

Suppose we elect to follow Queen Elizabeth on one of those " progresses " which she loved so frequently to make amongst her subjects, say the Kent and Sussex one of 1573, from Croydon through the heart and the Weald of Kent into Sussex, and round by Dover and Sandwich to Greenwich. We should trace her from this palace to that nobleman's seat, from this ancient hall to that loyal borough, and our journey would be not always by main roads and beaten tracks through a tripper-haunted country, but more often by lanes and byways, through a land where even now people come to their cottage doors at the sight of a stranger, although they may not hoot him if he happens to be in knicker- bockers, as the writer remembers they did twenty years ago in Romney Marsh. And we shall be much impressed by the persistent survival, through all these long years, of the memories of this Royal tour,—memories which it has been hitherto deemed beneath the so-called "dignity of history "to record, memories trivial in themselves, but vastly interesting as testimony to the value of local tradition as an aid to history, and so evidence of the marvellous reverence which our ancestors had for the Queen who so adroitly alternately bullied and caressed them. Something more than mere memories is naturally to be found in such of the stately homes where she alighted as still exist. Her beds are every- where, so are glasses out of which she drank, silver cups left by her as acknowledgments, articles of her stupendous wardrobe, and so forth, whilst garden walks and seats and bowers innumerable still bear her name. But there are humbler memories which are just as interesting. Under this Royal Oak

she breakfasted; from under that one she shot at deer ; at flit ancient inn she halted whilst her horse was being shod at the smith's over the Way; and here, there, and every- where she uttered those bon-mots of hers which, if col- lected, would fill a volume. Life has gone along gently in this land about which Gloriana travelled, so gently that nobody is confounded when you ask about Queen Elizabeth, but speak of her passing through as if it were but a year or two ago. So little, too, has the face of the country changed that we may be sure the eyes of the Virgin Queen looked upon much that meets our view, to-day, and that many an ancient cottage, still sturdy and a home, was decked for her passage along the village street. Or let the holiday-maker follow in the footsteps of another Royal traveller of a very different kind. Gloriana travelled for pleasure and profit, and perhaps from policy, and she travelled en vraie souveraine, lodging and faring sumptuously, and loaded with gifts and adulation wherever she went ; but the fate of Charles L was generally to travel as a baffled or beaten commander. Not for him always the brilliant reception with the homage of bended knees and lowered eyes, the magnificent banquet, and the luxurious catafalque- couch; but more frequently the scamper along the little- known lane, the hasty meal, and the rude lodging. Hence popular sympathy is all with him, and if no records were extant of his marches and counter-marches, his advances and retreats, traditions enougll of "the poor gentleman," as he is so frequently called, exist to fill up the hiatus.

Now with us the American traveller has but one reputation, —that of being in such a violent hurry that, paradoxical as it may sound, whilst he sees everything, he sees nothing. But ke most national portraitures, this is an exaggeration. .There are, no doubt, a great many Americans who follow at top speed a certain beaten route, which is regarded as the necessary qualification for being able to say that they have

done" England. But, on the other hand, there is an ever growing number of Americans who travel intelligently, and from these we Britons maylearn many a good lesson. Somewhat on the lines of the two historical holidays above described, an American lady has recently followed with minute exactitude the journeys of Mary Queen of Scots. The present writer met a man at Boscobel in Staffordshire who was tracing the flight of Charles II. after the battle of Worcester: he had got badly mixed in the manufacturing district about Moseley, which in Charles's day was wild, open country, but was going cheerily and conscientiously on into Warwickshire—the "dancing Marston" of Shakespeare's Country—Somersetshire, and by Charmouth and Bridport in Dorsetshire, eastward to Brighton an- d Shoreham in Susssex. Whilst dealing with Royal fugitives, it might be interesting to trace the Duke of Monmouth from Sedgemoor to the New Forest, and the wanderings of Prince Charlie after Culloden. But the land is full of similar objects for historical holidays. A tour of the chief battlefields of England or Scotland would take one into some of the best known districts of the land, into the very heart of Arcady, especially those in Northumberland and the Scottish Borderland, which may be termed the cockpit of Britain, and where Nature has been unable, and man has had no practical reason, to alter the natural features of the wild and solitary country. Or we may go further back in history, and endeavour to trace the movements of Hereward tlie Wake in Lincolnshire, and thus lead ourselves up to Boston, beloved of Americans, who, so we were informed by the landlord of the Peacock,' know the toWn better than many Bostonians, and are rarely heard to ask their way about.

From Boston it is easy to reach another favourite haunt of the intelligent American,—the country of the Pilgrim Fathers who went out in the Mayflower,' all about Ansterneld and Serooby. To be candid, the intelligent and energetic Ameri- can visitor has opened up historical England as it had never been opened before he began to travel. And be regards as historical much that is more strictly speaking literary than historical. Sulgrave in Northamptonshire is, of course, the historical home of the Washingtons, as is Wycombe of the Penns; but how many British tourists had seen Milton's cottage at Chalfont Saint Giles, or Cowper's house at Olney, or Gray's churchyard at Stoke Pogis, or familiarised them- selves with Shakespeare's Country, with— "Piping Pebworth, dancing Marston, Haunted Ifilborough, hungry Grafton, Dodging Exhall, Papist Wixford, Beggarly Broom, and drunken Bidford";

with Snitterfield, Aston Cantlow, Wootton Warren, Luddis,,. ton, and other villages associated either with the life or

writings of the poet, until papers in American magazines h,"

brought them into notice P A few enthusiasts, but very genuine holiday-makers.

Charles Dickens, again, is a historian in the eyes of the intelligent American. So, long before Londoners became bitten • with the craze, inquiring gentlemen with strange

hats might have often been seen prowling about St. George's Church in the Borough after the remains of Little Don-it's Marshalsea, wandering into the old High Street inn yards, trying to locate Lant Street, picking out Jo's churchyard of Saint Gabriel Grim, guessing which house near the Monument must have been Todgers's, sighing over the renovation of Kingsgate Street, Holborn, sacred to the memory of Mrs. Gamp, meditating about Ruth Pinch and Mark Tapley at the Temple Fountain, scowling at the new 'Saracen's Head,' Snow Hill, gazing at Mr. Tulkinghom's residence in Lincoln's Inn Fields, visiting the Old Curiosity Shop hard by,—in fact, tracing Dickens in London with the patience and fidelity of good pilgrims. But you met them far away out of London,—trying with a silver key to open the door of Dotheboys Hall in the remote

North Yorkshire village of Bowes, looking for Peggotty's boat on Yarmouth flats, at Bleak House near Lowestoft, at

Broadstairs with David Copperfield and Mr. Dick, at Canter.

bury with Agnes Wickfield and Uriah Heep, at Ipswich and Bath and Rochester and Cobham and Dorking with the Pickwiekians, and Pip, and Edwin Drood. It is all serious

history to them,—at any rate, they are very serious in their researches, and afford a strong contrast to the majority of our countrymen, who are energetic enough in orthodox sight.

seeing, but who so rarely strike out original plans of corn. bining instruction with recreation.