Those who travel about England for their pleasure, or, for that matter, about any part of Western Europe, rightly associate with such travel the pleasure of history: for history adds to a man, giving him, as it were, a great memory of things like a human memory, but stretched over a far longer space than that of one human life. It makes him, I do not say wise and great, but certainly in communion with wisdom and greatness.

It adds also to the soil he treads, for to this it adds meaning. How good it is when you come out of Tewkesbury by the Cheltenham road, to look upon those fields to the left and know that they are not only pleasant meadows, but also the place in which the fate of English mediæval monarchy was decided; or, as you stand by that ferry which is not known enough to Englishmen (for it is one of the most beautiful things in England) and look back and see Tewkesbury tower framed between tall trees over the level of the Severn, to see the Abbey buildings in your eye of the mind—a great mass of similar stone with solid Norman walls, standing to the right of the building.

[Pg 136]

All this historical sense and the desire to marry History with Travel is very fruitful and nourishing, but there is another interest allied to it which is very nearly neglected, and which is yet in a way more fascinating and more full of meaning. This interest is the interest in such things as lie behind recorded history, and have survived into our own times. For underneath the general life of Europe, with its splendid epic of great Rome turned Christian, crusading, discovering, furnishing the springs of the Renaissance and flowering at last materially into this stupendous knowledge of to-day, the knowledge of all the Arts, the power to construct and to do—underneath all that is the foundation on which Europe is built, the stem from which Europe springs; and that stem is far, far older than any recorded history, and far, far more vital than any of the phenomena which recorded history presents.

Recorded history for this island, and for Northern France and for the Rhine Valley, is a matter of two thousand years; for the Western Mediterranean of three; but the things of which I speak are to be reckoned in tens of thousands of years. Their interest does not lie only or even chiefly in things that disappeared. It is indeed a great pleasure to rummage in the earth and find the polished stones of the men who came so many centuries before us, but of whose blood we certainly are; and it is a great pleasure to find or to guess that we find under Canterbury the piles of a lake or marsh dwelling,[Pg 137] proving that Canterbury has been there from all time, and that the apparently defenceless valley city was once chosen as an impregnable site when the water-meadows of the Stour were impassable as marsh, or with difficulty passable as a shallow lagoon. And it is delightful to stand on the earthwork beyond Chilham and to say to oneself (as one can say with a fair certitude), "Here was the British camp defending the south-east; here the tenth legion charged." All these are pleasant, but more pleasant I think to follow the thing where it actually survives.

Consider the Track-ways, for instance. How rich England is in these! No other part of Europe will afford the traveller so permanent and so fascinating a problem. Elsewhere Rome hardened and straightened every barbaric trail, but in this distant province of Britain she would only spend just so much energy as made them a foothold for her soldiery; and all over England you go if you choose foot by foot along the ancient roads that were made by the men of your blood before they had heard of brick, or of stone, or of iron, or of written laws.

I wonder that more men do not set out to follow, let us say, the Fosse-way. There it runs right across Western England from the south-west to the north-east, in a line direct yet sinuous, characters which are the very essence of a savage trail. It is a modern road for many miles, let us say; and there[Pg 138] you are tramping along the Cotswold on a hard-metalled modern English highway, with milestones and notices from the county council telling you that the culverts will not bear a steam-engine, if so be you were travelling in one. Then suddenly it comes up against a cross-road and apparently ceases, making what map draughtsmen call a "T"; but right in the same line you will see a gate, and beyond it a farm lane, and so you follow. You come to a spinney where a ride is cut through by the wood-reeve, and it is all in the same line. The Fosse-way turns into a little path, but you are still on it; it curls over a marshy brook-valley, keeping on firm land, and as you go you see old stones put there Heaven knows how many generations ago—or ............