England

So much space has been given to Oxford and Cambridge, where young England receives the crowning garlands of the academies, that I can do no more than briefly mention the great public schools: Eton, under the shadow of the King's castle at Windsor; Harrow, on a hill a little apart from London; Winchester, nestling in the valley where, if tradition can be trusted, King Arthur once held a court; Rugby, in the Midlands, enjoying a sturdier climate and giving to the world that very manly exercise, Rugby football. These and others might each have a book to themselves with justice. But in this volume we must move on to see something of adult England.

CHAPTER V

ENGLAND AT WORK

A good proportion of young English manhood after having passed through their course of education at home are claimed away from their country. The Indian Civil Service, the Services of the Crown Colonies, the Navy, the Army garrisons abroad, the immigration demand of the Overseas' Dominions—all these make a tax on the numbers of adult England; and unfortunately the tax is much more heavy upon the numbers of males than of females. Thus there is a great disproportion of sexes in England. The females far outnumber the males, especially in the cities. But after all the demands have been met, there are still some millions of Englishmen left. Let us see the work they do, the home life they lead.

First of all, if a young Englishman is of the well-to-do order, and is ambitious, he will strive to take some part in politics. He may not be born to be a member of the House of Lords: and only six hundred or so of him can hope to become members of the House of Commons. But there are numerous other avenues of political activity, such as County Councils and Committees of all kinds. It is a wholesome aspiration of the best type of Englishmen to take some part, not necessarily a paid part, in the government and administration of their country. The supreme ambition, then, of the young Englishman may be said to be to work in the House of Commons; and that keeps "the Mother of Parliaments," in spite of all that pessimists may say, the leading legislative body of the world.

In its vast membership the House of Commons includes experts on every subject under the sun. There is no topic of debate imaginable on which some member cannot speak as a past-master. And the House insists that if you wish to engage its attention you must have something to say. You may halt or stumble in your speech, but you must have something to say or you will fail to get a hearing, no matter how charmingly you may talk. That helps the debate to a high level, discouraging talk for mere talk's sake.

"Mr. Speaker," who presides over the House of Commons, seems to be always a genius in the art of managing a deliberative assembly. At any rate, one never hears of a weak "Mr. Speaker." The present one takes it to be his duty to suppress all irrelevance and all tediousness in debate. He insists that a member shall say his say without circumlocution or repetition. With the vigilance of a ratting terrier he watches for discursiveness, and pounces upon the offender at once. I recollect a debate on the Indian question, arising out of the House of Lords' amendments in an Indian governing Councils Bill. All the speakers in the debate were experts with an inside knowledge of Indian affairs. They all spoke with terseness and directness. But there were, nevertheless, four interruptions from Mr. Speaker, that "the hon. member was not sticking to the point at issue." In each case you recognised that Mr. Speaker was right. In one case, and one case only, did the rebuked member attempt to argue the point. "I was only going to point out, Mr. Speaker," he started. The whole House rose against him. "'Vide, 'Vide," they called from front and cross and back benches. He attempted again, and again the cries of "'Vide" drowned his voice; and he had to submit without argument. The House clearly believed in its tyrant. It requires a curious sort of genius to be so able to "proof-read" a current debate and hit at once on the first divergence into redundancy.

If a "Mr. Speaker" is to become a tradition as one of the greatest of the many great Mr. Speakers, then he must have a sense of humour as well as a gift of prompt decision. The present Mr. Speaker has that qualification. He does not say "funny" things. But in almost every ruling and reproof there is a slight flavour of fun. A rule of the House was made after the "Suffragettes" made trouble once or twice in the chamber, that the Women's Gallery, a curious gilded bird-cage perched up in the roof of the House, should be open only to "relatives of members." Mr. Speaker was asked to define what closeness of relation justified admission. "That," said Mr. Speaker, "I must leave to the individual consciences of hon. members." The House chuckled and understood that any respectable person could be counted as a feminine relative for purposes of admission to the gallery.

For the student of the origins of the English-race it is interesting—and quite easy of accomplishment if you have an acquaintance who is a member of Parliament—to see the quaint ceremony in the Lords of the Royal Assent being given to Bills. On the occasion on which I attended, the Chancellor and two Peers, acting as Commissioners for the King, sat in solemn state, the Chancellor finding obvious difficulty in accommodating both a huge wig and a cocked hat on his head. To them entered as far as the Bar of the House, on summons, some of the Commons, heralded by Black Rod and led by the Speaker. The titles of the Bills were recited by a clerk, and, with much ritual of bowing, the Royal Assent was granted in Norman French: "Le Roy le veult." It was rather a pity that the Bills were painfully prosaic ones, dealing with tramways and the like. The elaborate medieval ceremony would have been more fitting to some great measure of statecraft. Still it did not seem incongruous. That is a characteristic of London. It is a medieval city modernised, but without the flavour of the medievalism being spoiled.

Of course it is well known that the present are not the original Houses of Parliament; it may not be so familiar a fact that Westminster Hall covers the old site, and that tablets, let into its walls, mark the limits, curiously small, of the old House of Commons. The King is supposed by tradition to open Parliament in the Hall of Westminster on the old site of the Commons. But to do so he would have to stand exactly on the spot where King Charles I. rose to receive a death sentence from his revolted Commons; and I think that lately our monarchs have shown sentimental objections to this and have let tradition in the matter go.

The House of Lords and the House of Commons are built in the one straight line, with the lobbies intervening. The King, when seated on the throne, can see right through (all the doors being open) to the Speaker on his chair some four hundred yards away. The Lords have the finer debating hall; but the Commons, it is complained, monopolise all the comfortable smoking and lounge rooms. Evidently they think that the noble lords have enough comfort in their own homes.

Lately a committee of the Houses of Parliament have been discussing the question of redecorating the buildings, and have come practically to the conclusion to do nothing. In some of the halls mural paintings of a rather astonishing kind, betraying a time when artistic standards were a little lower than now, cover the panels. To fill the gaps with paintings of this epoch would make for incongruity. To imitate the old-fashioned and rather bad-fashioned existing panels does not seem advisable. So probably the difficulty will be solved by doing nothing, unless a daring wight suggests the painting out of some old work to make room for a complete set of modern frescoes. Probably, if there were just now an unquestionably pre-eminent British artist offering for the work, that would be done. As it is, the Mother of Parliaments remains with some of her halls a little patchy in decoration; some of them, indeed, a good deal ugly.

But, of course, governing the country is the business of the few. Tempting though it is to linger on at Westminster, let us see other classes of England at work. The historic industry of England is agriculture, and it is to this day one of the most important, though a dwindling one lately. Still, however, the English are an agricultural people; though it is around the agriculture of a century ago that their affections are entwined. Modern agriculture, nevertheless, hardly exists in England, neither in the production of grain nor of fruit. The average orchard seems better designed to be an insectarium for the cultivation of pests than for the growth of good fruit. Straggling unkempt trees, growing for the most part their own wild way, naturally do not produce like the well-disciplined trees of the modern orchardist. But the soil is wondrous kind. That anything at all should come of such culture, or neglect of culture, is to be explained by a great graciousness of Nature.

Fruit is the text I take, because fruit is at once the worst example, and the most obvious one. But in no branch of agriculture is there anything approaching to modern scientific farming. Wheat-farming represents the crown of agricultural achievement in England, and very good yields per acre are garnered, because the tillage is careful, the manuring generous, the climate favourable. But what gross waste of labour is involved in the cultivation of these tiny fields, laboriously ploughed, in many instances with a single furrow plough; sown by hand and often reaped, yes reaped, with scythe-men and picturesque but unthrifty gathering of haymakers!

But there is this to be said for the old-fashioned English agriculture, that it is very, very picturesque. The tiny hedge-divided fields, the orchards in which the trees grow to forest dimensions, are far more pleasing to the eye than the great, bare, wire-fence-divided wheat-fields of Canada and Australia; or their orchards with close-clipped trees kept working with all their might for a living and not allowed the luxury of a single vagrant branch or the sight of any green carpet of grass beneath. And, withal, in England, farming is not a commercial speculation altogether. If it relied upon its commercial success, it would die out almost completely. But the old landholders love their estates: the newly rich, if they are of the English spirit, aspire to become landholders. Both are usually content if from their agricultural estates they are able to make the products pay a slight profit only.

The area under tillage shows, therefore, a tendency to dwindle, though already it is very small, considering the thick population of the country. Love of sport and love of seeing the woods in their wild state have always set apart a great area of England for forest and for game preserve. Nowadays we do not make a deer forest as roughly as did William the Conqueror the New Forest for the sake of the deer "whom he loved as if he had been their father." But somehow land passes out of cultivation to become moorland or forest. These "waste lands" are far from being useless, however. They graze ponies and cows; they are deer forests, grouse moors, pheasant preserves, golf links. Land is more valuable for sport than for agriculture, and therefore it drifts to the use of sport, and peasants make way for pheasants.

A fine track of oak forest has been left at the Forest of Dean near the borders of Wales—the finest forest tract probably in England. It is a wild tract of steep hills covered with oaks, used for the building of the Navy in the days before the wooden walls had given way to steel ramparts.

The fen areas alone are in course of reclamation from the wild to the cultivated state. The work of bringing them back to usefulness was begun under Charles I. by Dutch engineers. Now a great part of the old fen lands are good productive meadows bounded by a network of dykes and drains, from which the surplus of water is pumped into the channels of the Ouse and other rivers, and so finds its way to the North Sea. Like the similar land of Holland, these reclaimed fens are excellent for the culture of bulbs, and Lincolnshire has made quite an industry of sending narcissi to the London market.

Considering the Englishman at his work in other capacities, he is iron-founder, pottery-maker, textile-weaver, miner, and of course sailor and merchant. His work is characterised by a great solidness and honesty. There is not much "gimcrack" work turned out in England. The spirit of her workshops is to make things that will last, not short-life tools and machines, such as some other peoples love. Indeed they do say that the idols made at Birmingham—a large proportion of the idols for the heathens of the world are made at Birmingham—are made so solidly as to suggest that the manufacturers have grave doubts about Paganism being supplanted among their customers for some generations.

Occasionally, indeed, one is tempted to believe that the Englishman loves work for work's own sake. I concluded this on first landing at Liverpool, when it took an hour's effort, on an average, for each passenger from the mail steamer to sort out his luggage. At Euston at least another half-hour was wasted in the same way. All that might have been avoided by a luggage check system such as prevails in Australia, America, and other countries. But evidently the English character for steady energy and stolid good humour is built up partly by following the sport of luggage-hunting.

The English public and semi-public service, which gives to the visitor the first view of the Englishman at work, is simply beyond praise. In the railway service, the civility of the guards and porters, the neatness, the quiet energy of the drivers and firemen, are notable. In most countries railway engines seem always dirty and ill-kept. In England they are bright and clean. That shows a workman's pride in his work and its instruments. It is the man with the clean engines who is going to win through in the end.

I have a means of comparison of the public service in the United States and in England. In New York a letter addressed to me at a newspaper office went astray through a clerk refusing to take it in. I inquired for it at the New York Central Post Office: was—not very civilly—referred to the particular district post office which had attempted to deliver the letter. A clerk there could not see that anything could be done—"the letter would be opened, probably, and returned to the writer.... Perhaps if I applied at the Washington Dead Letter Office it would do some good." I applied by letter (unanswered), then personally, and was told in a tired way that the matter would be looked into and I should be communicated with in London. That is the last I ever heard of the matter.

Now in London one morning I left a small despatch case in a motor omnibus. Reporting to Scotland Yard, I stated that the papers in the portfolio were important and their recovery urgent. The police officer at once volunteered to wire round to every police station in the metropolitan district (200 of them), reporting the loss and asking that word should be at once sent if the article were handed in. Before eleven that night a police officer called at my house with a despatch from Scotland Yard that the case had been found.

"The public good" depends largely on the efficiency of the public service. It can never be real when the Government and the instruments of the Government are careless of the people's convenience. The efficiency of the Post Office, the police, and the park servants in England is great proof of a sound national spirit.

When the Englishman is through with his work—whether it be the large and dignified work of administering his Empire, or the smaller task of driving a tram—he goes home; and he is not a really happy Englishman, whatever his class, if his home has not at least the sight of a green tree. He is willing, even if he is poor and condemned to work long hours, to travel long distances each day so that he may have at the end of his work a home to come to which will please his love of green England.

Having noted that the Englishman's home is, whenever possible, adorned with a little bit of green garden, step over its threshold and consider its domestic economy; that is to say, see the Englishwoman at her special work. This must be done by classes.

In the wealthiest class the house is perfectly managed. It seems to run like the fabled machine of perpetual motion. There is no sign of the driving-power, no racket, no effort. Breakfast is a meal of charming informality, which, I think, illustrates best the domestic ideals of the Englishman. Self-help from amply furnished sideboards and from tea and coffee urns is the rule. There is no fixed moment for coming to breakfast, and, since you help yourself, no servants need to be in attendance. How pleasantly thought-out is this idea! You have not the urging to an inconvenient punctuality of the thought that you are keeping servants waiting. Dinner is a ceremony of ritual. It is the social crown of the day. You are expected to treat it with the considerateness due to its importance. To be asked to dinner is the sign of the Englishman's complete acceptance of you as a desirable person. (He may ask you to lunch without admitting quite as much.) To be asked, casually, "to eat with us" at dinner time shows a degree of friendliness which is willing to allow some familiarity.

It is because the luxury of upper-class life in England is so suave and so refined that it does not challenge antagonism as does the arrogant wealth of other lands. An English manor house, such as Stoke Court—once upon a time the house of the poet Grey—is, from its beautiful surroundings to the last detail of a curtain, as fine a product as civilisation can show. And the Englishman's home is for himself, his friends, and, in so far as it can claim to be of any public interest, for the enjoyment also of the mass of his fellow-countrymen.

The casual traveller through London may, on several days of the year, see a great crowd of omnibuses and drags outside Buckingham Palace, and learn that the grounds of the King's palace had been that day thrown open to the public. To a large extent the royal palaces thus welcome the people as guests; and the great houses of the nobility, which have fine collections of paintings, are in very many cases treated as semi-public institutions. This shows a fine public spirit and feeling of common patriotism between classes.

The middle class fashions itself, as closely as it can, on the upper class. Its home is often as admirably managed, though on a smaller scale. Its observance of etiquette is more rigid, especially in the "lower middle class." Smooth home-management is the Englishman's (or the Englishwoman's) gift. The domestic economy of the country cottager seems generally good, but the city worker often makes the mistake of trying to ape the standards of richer people, sacrificing a good deal of material comfort to have, for instance, his "drawing-room" or parlour.

But on the whole the Englishman's home proves as high a standard of taste and good feeling as the twentieth century can offer. It is a fine reward for the work-doer, a fine fortress from which to issue forth to work. Let us now see England at play.

CHAPTER VI

ENGLAND AT PLAY

"These English take their pleasures sadly," said a French wit. It was a misunderstanding of the national expression. The Englishman takes his pleasures not sadly but resolutely. It is a holiday. He is out to enjoy himself. He will enjoy himself whatever the obstacles. There is a grim resolve in his mind. But he is not sad: he is resolutely merry. That look on his face is not agony; it is stern determination.

I have seen Hampstead Heath on the midsummer Bank Holiday. A frowning sky, a bleak wind, and occasional gusty showers of rain declared the day to be not of midsummer and not suitable to open-air holiday. But the East End was not to be deterred from merriment. "London's playground" was like a huge ant-hill with swarming holiday-makers, and all had made up their dogged English minds to rejoice and be merry. That was apparent from the first.

In the "Tube" railways girls of from sixteen to sixty—all girly—giggled hilariously at everything and anything and nothing. "It's from the other side" announced one on the train platform; and this fact about the train's going was greeted with shouting laughter, and the "joke" went round a widening circle of rippling merriment. On the road, the coster's cart, loaded with Mr. and Mrs. Coster and a group of Costerlings—the numerousness of which said "no race suicide here"—scattered abroad song, vociferous if not tuneful. When a shower came the song grew louder, as though to smother the weather.

Commerce helped the people's resolve to be gay. You could buy a bag of confetti for a halfpenny; for the same sum a stick adorned with bright paper streamers, or a tuft of gorgeously-dyed flax. A penny provided a tartan cap in paper, wearing which one might be quite ridiculously gay. The oceans had been dredged and the earth rifled for the people's holiday. Shellfish of all sorts, bananas from the West Indies, plums from Spain, roses from Kent and Surrey, pine-apple tinned at Singapore, bright nacre shells from Australian beaches, little love-birds from Papua trained as "fortune-tellers" to pick out a paper telling you of the happiness in store for you—all these were at your service; and the standard price was one penny. A few coppers opened up for the holiday Englishman the resources of a whole Empire.

Over all lowered a grey sky. But what mattered that! The factory girls danced on the gravel paths to the music of barrel organs (sometimes, indeed, of the humble mouth organ), danced often with verve, and always with hilarity. The Australian larrikin and his "donah" dance at "down the harbor" picnics with a fixed solemnity of face, as if performing some weird corybantic rite. The London coster and his girl are determinedly merry. The merriment may be in some cases forced, but it is forced with grit. A dance on the road is broken up to allow a cart to slowly creep past. It is resumed with perfect good humour, and with the same gay whoops.

Yet there is nothing orgiastic in the merriment. Among the many many thousands you may notice here and there a man and—far worse sight—occasionally a girl the worse for drink, prompting the thought that if public opinion won't keep women out of the bars the licensing law should; but the great mass of the crowd is quite sober: the merriment is not vinous.

If dancing, shouting, or "spooning"—discouraged neither by the gaze of the public nor the dampness of the weather—did not amuse, there were more intellectual amusements. You might have your head read for a penny, your character diagnosed by your eye for the same sum; or you might see an old man making a fairly good pretence of hanging himself, and he left it to your honesty to subscribe the penny.

The Englishman take his pleasures sadly? Not a bit of it. That roar from the Old Bull and Bush, the crackling laughter around all the booths and from all the crowded paths, tell that the Englishman can become very gay on quite slight encouragement.

A day at Southend, another great "popular place of amusement," gives the same impression of resolute gaiety. A good-humoured crowd packs the cheap-trip trains. There are more passengers than seats; and young fellows take it amiably in turn to stand, leaving the elders and the womenfolk to sit throughout. At Southend there is no beach, as one understands the term elsewhere—a scimitar curve of gleaming sand on which blue waves break, showing their white teeth in smiles. The "beach" is just a flat, which at high tide the sea covers, to leave it at low tide a wide muddy expanse of marshy soil. But the seaside trippers make the best of it. The cliffs are thronged with happy picnickers. The beach is dotted with waders, who go out many hundreds of yards along the wet flat, and in some mysterious way enjoy themselves. Where at last the water starts there are bathers disporting from boats. A pier which stretches out its long straightness and suggests a task rather than a pleasure, is filled with happy promenaders, who sniff up the smell of the seaweed and recognise it as ozone. They mostly wear yachting caps, or some other costume sign of the seaside, and an air of nautical adventure.

Yes, the Englishman has a great faculty of enjoying himself. I am indeed struck, in many aspects of life, at the Englishman's faculty of being cheerful under what one would consider depressing conditions. The Englishman does not hesitate to take his girl to the cemetery to court her. A London friend asked me, with real enthusiasm, to look at the "fine view" from his flat, and it looked out on an old Plague Cemetery, where the victims of the London plague nourish the green of the trees. The Englishman take his pleasures sadly? Rather he takes his sadnesses pleasurably.

It is the Englishman of the industrial classes I have pictured amusing himself. As to the richer folk, is there anything fresh to be said? Does not every one at least think that he knows? Have not "society" novelists innumerable, from "Ouida" downwards, given us studies of English "society" people at play, making the home life of the duke open for inspection by the meanest intelligence? Are there not numberless penny and halfpenny papers carrying on the good work to this day?

If one can contrive to put out of one's mind all that nonsense and observe with intelligence, one will find that the middle-class Englishman and the rich Englishman amuse themselves after very much the same manner as do the people of the poorer classes. They refine on the methods, but the spirit is the same. At heart, the Englishman of all classes loves feasting and boisterous jollity. Education and breeding may modify his tastes, but they are still there. Au fond, the typical Englishman likes best a joke that has a savour of the "practical" in it. Give him his natural rein, and duke's son, cook's son—if there are any English cooks left to have sons—will lightly incline his thoughts to horseplay when he wishes to be genuinely amused.

Yet perhaps this, too, passes. I remember thinking so, Lord Mayor's Day 1909, when the procession through the city proved to be not a "show," but a display of the defence guards of the nation. Perhaps this may be taken as a hint of a growing earnestness in English life, of a recognition of stern struggles to come and only to be met with resolved and steady vigour. It had, of a surety, some significance—the sudden casting off on the city's great festival day of an old habit of childish play and the putting in its place of a display of soldiers and sailors, and boys who will one day be soldiers and sailors. Of some significance, too, was the ready, popular acquiescence in the change. Crowds that had been for years regaled on such occasions with broad pantomime, all fun and levity, were faced of a sudden with serious drama—soldiers in glittering mail, still more impressive soldiers in uniforms of the colour of earth; Boy Scouts playing at being soldiers and enjoying the most wholesome game; war paraphernalia of wagons and field telegraphs and field hospitals, and guns of all kinds, from the great mastiff siege-guns drawn by eight horses, which the Navy taught the Army to make mobile, down to the vicious little terrier pom-poms. And the people cheered the change. There was no hint at a protest against the departure from the stage of the old vanities. After a quieter method than that which came of Savonarola's teaching, but none the less surely, they had gone to destruction, and in their place was a dutiful parade of citizens armed for the defence of their homes: and the people approved. The Balaclava veterans and the Boy Scouts shared the honours of the day. Gog and Magog were not; but the crowd would have its symbolism, and cheered the ideal of tried valour, the ideal of aspiring youth, as they saw them seriously personified.

In 1910 and 1911 there was the same "sober-minded" Lord Mayor's Day; and the old pantomime procession clearly will never be revived. Perhaps now the English nation is at last "growing up" to be too old for such elemental humours. If so, does the fact speak for good augury or evil augury? I wonder. A well-known Scottish artist of the day, who lives in Paris "because it is the place for all rebels and all ideas," and sells his pictures in London and America, told me once very solemnly, "When the English people get artistic and witty they are going to go down. It is the Philistinism of England that proves her national strength and sanity." I reassured him by telling him that most of the statues erected in England nowadays were those of men in trousers, and we were comforted to think that there was still enough of Philistinism in England to keep her safe and sound. But it does look as though the Englishman were losing his enjoyment of primitive humour when he vetoes Gog and Magog on Lord Mayor's Day. Also he begins to live in hotels and to dine at restaurants when he is not travelling. Yes, on the surface all peoples grow sadly alike, and that charm of travel which comes from the stimulating contact of the mind with the more obvious differences between lands and peoples threatens to vanish in a generation or two, through the fashion of admiring all countries but one's own spreading, and through each country learning to imitate some other. Still, the threat has been often made before without justifying itself. In Shakespeare's time it was Italy

But we did not in the end become Italians. In spite of surface imitations the deeper differences which come from the tap-roots of nations remain.

The Lord Mayor's Day of the old style of buffoonery is dead. But there is, on the other hand, a movement in England nowadays—a happy and wholesome movement—to revive the festivities of May Day, which once was the great festival of the country-side. The old chronicles in their descriptions of May Day rejoicings provide a very delectable picture. This from Bourne:—

Stubbes, writing in 1595, describes closely the bringing home of the May-pole:—

Hall, in his Chronicle of the time of Henry VIII., tells how the feast of May Day was sometimes accompanied by a kind of historical pageant. This is from his description of a May Day in the seventh year of the reign of Henry VIII.:—

I have spoken, so far, of "amusement" only. There are other forms of play. There is "sport." Now sport must not be considered an amusement merely in England. It is a vital absorbing affair of life, a "bemusement" rather. Some serious-minded folk in London still tell, with deprecation, of incidents of the time of the South African War, when the evening newspaper contents bills showed that there was a keener attraction for coppers in news of the cricket matches than in news of the campaign. But even these serious-minded people themselves probably have often bought a paper which recorded a century in a Test Match in preference to one which gave some news of national importance; and have murmured to themselves in excuse something that the dour old Duke of Wellington probably never said, about the Battle of Waterloo having been won on the playing fields of Eton.

"Sport," indeed, is so much a part of English life that it could never be uprooted without making some vital change in the national character—and, perhaps, not a change for the better.

One thing the passion for sport does give to the Englishman, and that is a passion for fair play. There is not in any other nation of the world such a nice sense of manly honour. "Give him a sporting chance" means that you must take no unfair advantage of an enemy. "Take it like a sport" means that you must not be merely a cheerful winner, but must be ready to face losses and set-backs with equanimity.

When the small English boy goes to school the question is solemnly asked as to what sports he will take up. This is of at least equal importance with the other question as to what professional or business career he will follow in the future. Often it is counted of greater moment. Will the youngster be good at cricket, or football, or rowing? On that hinges the degree of his greatness in his world's estimation for quite a number of years. Cricket is, on the whole, the most important. To be a classic bat, to be a deadly slow bowler, or a still more deadly fast bowler—that is greatness for the young man. The cricket matches between the great public schools, the universities, the counties, are the chief pre-occupation of a large proportion of England during the summer months. Football grips more among the industrial classes, cricket more among the professional and administrative classes. Between them they keep a great part of England excited from one year's end to the other.

There are, of course, other sports of the schools—running, jumping, lawn tennis, hockey and the like. But they usually are just allowed to fill in gaps between cricket and football. Manhood, however, adds to the list of sports largely. There is golf. "If you find that golf interferes with your business, give up your business," runs a popular gibe. It accentuates, without misrepresenting acutely, the attitude taken up by very many Englishmen and Englishwomen on the subject of golf. They live in a district because of its golf facilities, shape their holiday resorts by the golf they offer, reckon their days by the chances they offer for golf.

Horse-racing is another great English sport, in which few take an active part, but in which a vast multitude has a share of interest either as spectators or as speculators. It claims such a huge share of English attention that one definition of the English is, "a horse-racing nation"; and wherever an English town is built in any part of the world it will have a race-course almost as soon as it has a church and a school. The various race-meetings throughout the year in England vary in their social character. The Derby is a great popular event, to see which the East End of London pours itself out on the Surrey roads. Goodwood, on the other hand, is very much a "society" meeting.

The tale is not yet complete. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Englishmen find it necessary to life to disport on water during the summer—yachting, skiff-rowing, punting, or canoeing. Hunting is mostly the sport of the well-to-do, though an otter-hunt calls a whole country-side to its excitement, demanding of no one either that he should be mounted or that he should be rich.

Fox-hunting is of the very marrow of the English character. "The unspeakable pursuing the uneatable," said Wilde savagely of the English squire pursuing the fox; and thereby proved his utter un-Englishness. To sneer at fox-hunting! It is a step towards atheism. Once upon a time I remember going out into the yard of a little village public-house on the Monaro (Australia) and seeing chained up in the yard a fox. I stopped to ask why, and the groom told me of an English tourist who had also inquired as to the fox, and who had learned incidentally that poison was laid for foxes on the Monaro because they had become a pest; and, so learning, had set his face at once away from a land where such barbarities were possible. He did not reckon his own life safe, I suppose, in a country where foxes were poisoned.

The pheasant battues, which are one of the autumn games of the rich in England, I would hardly dignify as "sport." They are the growth of the recent times of great fortunes, and scarcely a wholesome sign, I think. Grouse-shooting en battue is more tolerable as a sport, for at least the birds are wild-bred.

But one may not even catalogue all the sports of England in a chapter. I find that fishing—in all its phases: salmon, trout, deep-sea, and the rest—asks attention, and may not have it. One final note: the Englishman, for all his present sports, is hospitable to welcome others, and often takes them up to excel in them. In flying, for instance, the Englishman is beginning now to take a place after the French. And I can recollect, as late as the end of 1909, a Flying Meeting at Doncaster at which not a single Englishman took the air. Within a little more than two years what a change!

That Doncaster Flying Meeting was the first ever held in England, and I was one of those who travelled up to see the strange fowl in the air, birds of the growth of the fabled roc winging steady flights around the field once sacred to the horse. Badly treated by the weather, the "First Flying Meeting in England" faced an outlook which was not too cheerful. Over a sodden ground a grey sky lowered threateningly, and gusty winds, blowing hither and thither, threatened storms. The great "birds" nestled within their sheds, and a nervous committee went round lifting questioning hands to the sky. If this day were a fiasco the meeting was ruined, and the horses of Doncaster would have the laugh over their strange rivals.

Then the sun came out. The wind dropped to a zephyr's lightness. There seemed no reason why the men should not fly, and they could fly. Whispers went round hinting at delays which were condemnable because avoidable if they were real. An official suggested that aviators had all the tricks and uncertainties of the indispensable prima donna assoluta; that they had to be humoured to take the stage when the call-bell rang. Devout prayers were muttered for the day when aviation would be as common in England as trick-cycling and stout, bejewelled promoters of flying meetings would lounge haughtily in front of a long queue of humble applicants for a chance to appear, and country hotel-keepers would, with most particular care, exact payment in advance from poor "artists" in flying who, in the event of a bad season, had such inconvenient facilities for escaping without footing the score. That time has almost come in England to-day. But then in 1909 public and managers had to wait patiently on the gentlemen who had improved on Prometheus and, harnessing the fire that he stole from above, dared the assault of the very heavens.

Finally the flying did begin. But it was all by Frenchmen on French machines. There was the Blériot, aptly to be compared in shape to a dragon-fly; the Farman, a long box trailing a baby box in its wake. The Blériot suggests a successful wooing, the Farman a scientific conquest, of the air. The one soars and swoops and skims actually like a bird, the other progresses with scientific and mathematical precision. One might imagine a respectable barn-door fowl brood-mother, resting a while after the arduous labours of the pheasant season, speculating dismally on the prospects of being called upon to hatch out a brood of aeroplanes, and resolving to accept with resignation a clutch of Blériots but to draw the line firmly at Farmans. No respectable fowl could give even the kinship of adoption to a flying contrivance that suggests so strongly a collection of egg-boxes.

Since then Englishmen have learned to fly, and aeroplaning is becoming one of the national sports. Also I see in some of the papers that because at the last Olympic Games England got more of the dust than of the laurels, the Englishman must set to work to learn to throw the javelin and the discus farther than any one else; and I believe that a section of him will accept the direction to do this and do it quite earnestly. So the Englishman who practises at football, cricket, hunting, sailing, rowing, fishing, running, walking, flying, shooting, must also learn to throw strange things great distances. Withal he has his work to do, and some time to give to the enjoyment of the beauty of his most beautiful England. A wonderful people of a wonderful country!

CHAPTER VII

THE CITIES OF ENGLAND

There are so many great cities and historic towns in England that a mere guide-book enumeration of the chief of them would fill many pages—in rather a dull fashion. I shall not attempt that, but will take the reader for a brief glance at some of the more notable centres of population.

In the beginning there is, of course, London—the capital of the world, the centre from which has sprung most of the great movements of the Christian era for the betterment of humanity, the magnet which draws to-day the best of the world's thought and energy. To have the best introduction to London I should like to think of the visitor coming upon it, as I did for the first time, in the "small hours" of a clear May morning. A drive through its streets then was a sheer delight. Hushed they were and solemn, the torrents of trade stilled for a few hours. But the soul of London was awake, though its busy material life for a brief time was asleep. The great grey old city was peopled with ghosts. Through the empty streets paced London's great men since Cæsar, some native and to the land born, others foreign, finding in England hospitality whether they came as poor refugees or as noble visitors. From the houses walked out memories and traditions in spectral hordes. The buildings themselves, mostly of the white freestone of Bath, which with London smoke becomes a dull black, and then with London showers learns to show here and there a patch of ghostly white, lent themselves to the fancy of a city of dreams. The architecture was disembodied, and floated in the air; the shadows of venerable churches and institutions were a background to shadows of great men and noble women.

In time I came in front of the Houses of Parliament, the shrine of representative government. Yonder, looming high in the pale early morning light, was the Nelson Monument, and stretching from it the Strand, leading to Fleet Street, whence issued the first newspapers of European civilisation. Near by Westminster Abbey lifted its grey fane in praise and prayer. This indeed seemed the very centre and capital of the world.

If you cannot so enter London for the first time, when its busy traffic is hushed, and the first pale glow of a spring dawn is in the sky, be heedful that some night you will give up thoughts of your couch to taste that joy. Wander then down Pall Mall, home of magnificent clubs, after the last late reveller has been taken to his cab, past the National Gallery, the Church of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields (a wondrous beautiful church by moonlight or first-dawn light), through Trafalgar Square, and along the Strand to Wellington Street. Cross the Thames by Waterloo Bridge, turning a blind eye to the electric signs that are now allowed to disfigure the south river front, and see the great sweep, right and left, of the Thames Embankment, and then look up in the sky to see the dome of St. Paul's afloat there. Recrossing the bridge, go to the left until Westminster Bridge is reached, and look there for the Houses of Parliament and, a little away from the river, the Abbey of Westminster. Then turn into Bird-Cage Walk by the side of St. James's Park and cross that park by the only path open at night, which will take you across the lake by a little footbridge. From the middle of that footbridge, looking towards the Horse Guards, there is, by night, a view as poetic as any that Venice can show: of the still lake fringed with woods, and—apparently rising up from its very marge—the Horse Guards, and the palaces which shelter the officials of the great public departments.