Before I set about the overhauling of my notes made on this tour—afoot, afloat, awheel—from London to Land’s End, I confided to an old friend my intention of publishing an account of these wanderings. Now, no one has such a mean idea of one’s capacities as an old friend, and so I was by no means surprised when he flouted my project. I have known the man for many years; and as the depth of an old friend’s scorn deepens with time, you may guess how profound by now is his distrust of my powers.

“Better hadn’t,” said he.

“And why not?” said I.

“See how often it has been done,” he replied. “Why should you do it again, after Elihu Burritt, after Walter White, and L’Estrange, and those others who have wearied us so often with their dull records of uneventful days?”

“I do it,” I said, “for the reason that poets write poetry, because I must. Out upon your Burritts and the rest of them; I don’t know them, and don’t want to—yet. When the book is finished, then they shall be looked up for the sake of comparison; at present, I keep an open mind on the subject.”

And I kept it until to-day. I have just returned from a day with these authors at the British Museum, and I feel weary. Probably most of them are dead by this time, as dead as their books, and nothing I say now can do them any harm; so let me speak my mind.

First I dipped into the pages of that solemn Yankee prig, Burritt, and presently became bogged in stodgy descriptions of agriculture, and long-drawn parallels between English and American husbandry. Stumbling out of these sloughs, one comes headlong upon that true republican’s awkward raptures over titled aristocracy. The rest is all a welter of cheap facts and interjectional essays in the obvious.

Then I essayed upon Walter White’s “Londoners Walk to the Land’s End”—horribly informative, and with an appalling poverty of epithet. This dreadful tourist was used (he says) to sing and recite to the rustics whom he met.

“’Tis a dry day, master,” say the thirsty countrymen to him; while he, heedless of their artful formula, calls not for the flowing bowl, but strikes an attitude, and recites to them a ballad of Macaulay’s!

And yet those poor men, robbed of their beer, applauded (says our author), and, like Oliver Twist, asked for more. Then an American coach-party had driven over part of our route, following the example of “An American Four-in-Hand in Britain,” by Citizen Carnegie. Indeed, we easily recognise the Citizen again, under the name of MÆcenas, among this party, which produced the “Chronicle of the Coach.”

The same Americanese pervades both books; the same patronage of John Bull, and the same laudation of those States, is common to them; but for choice, the Citizen’s own book is in the viler taste. Both jig through their pages to an abominable “charivari” of their own composing, an amalgam of “Yankee Doodle” and the “Marseillaise,” one with (renegade Scot!) a bagpipe “obbligato.”

They anticipate the time when we shall be blessed with a Republic after the model of their own adopted country; the Citizen (I think) commonly wears a cap of liberty for headgear, and a Stars and Stripes for shirt. This last may possibly be an error of mine. But at any rate I should like to see him tucking in the tails of such a star-spangled banner.

These were the works which were to forbid a newer effort at a book aiming at the same destination, but proceeding by an independent route, and (as it chanced) written upon different lines—written with what I take to be a care rather for personal impressions than for guide-book history.

We won to the West by no known route, but followed the inclinations of irresponsible tourists, with a strong disinclination for martyrdom on dusty highways and in uninteresting places. This, too, is explanatory of our taking the train at certain points and our long lingering at others. If, unwittingly or by intent, I have here or there in these pages dropped into history, I beg your pardon, I’m sure; for all I intended was to show you personal impressions in two media, pictures and prose.

CHARLES G. HARPER.

London, October 1893.