The English Countryside Classic Reprint

Excerpt from The English Countryside

We live in times when change is so rapid that customs and institutions of even a decade ago are no longer familiar. Everywhere the old is giving place to the new, and the methods of our forefathers are too leisurely for this hurrying age. The whole face of England is being rapidly altered, and this is perhaps more noticeable in the country, even in the most remote districts, than in the towns, where we look for change and improvements. So many old landmarks are being swept away that it seems time to call a halt and at least to take a survey before the old is banished by the new. In the towns it is perhaps almost too late to begin to preserve the buildings of the past, but in the country it is different. During most of the nineteenth century the country stagnated while the towns grew and prospered, but now ease of communication and the desire to see the country has brought about a change; the city is being regarded only as a workshop and the country as the place in which to live. People, too, are beginning to understand that rural England is, and has always been, as important as the towns, and that scattered up and down the land are places not only beautiful in themselves, but full of the associations of the past. Each has played its part in the making of England as we know it to-day, and each has some story to tell, if we can only learn to read. An old rubbish heap may contain a wealth of romance, and a commonplace custom may have had its origin in the days when the inhabitants of these islands were little better than barbarians.

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