opped and lunched, through no choice of our own, for it
was a bad lunch in every particular, and cost three shillings and
sixpence a head. To add to the indignity, the local policemen came
along and said we were making an obstruction, and insisted that we
push the machine into the stable-yard, as if we were committing a
breach of the law, when really it was only an opportunity for a
"bobby" to show his authority. Happy England!

All the morning we had been running over typical English roads and
running well. There is absolutely no question but that the
countryside of England is unequalled for that unique variety of
picturesqueness which is characteristic of the land, but it lacks the
grandeur that one finds in France, or indeed in most countries of
Continental Europe.

Crossing England thus, one gets the full force of Rider Haggard's
remarks about the small farmer; how, because he cannot get a small
holding, that can be farmed profitably, for his very own, he becomes
a tenant, or remains always a labourer, never rising in the social
scale.

The peasant of Continental Europe may be poor and impoverished, may
eat largely of bread instead of meat, and be forced to drink "thin
wine" instead of body-building beer,--as the economists in England
put it,--but he has much to be thankful for, nevertheless.

We stopped just before Beckhampton, at a puzzling crossroads, and
asked a labourer of the fields if we were "right" for Chippenham. He
stared blankly, doffed his hat with humility, but for a time answered
never a word. He knew Calne, a town half a dozen miles away, for he
occasionally, walked in there for a drinking-bout on a heavier brand
of beer than he could buy locally, but, though he had always heard of
Chippenham, he did not know whether it lay north, east, south, or
west. This is deplorable, of course, for it was within a twenty-mile
radius, but it is astonishing the frequency with which one meets this
blankness in England when looking for information. There are tens of
thousands like this poor fellow, and one may well defy Rider Haggard
to make a "landed proprietor" out of such poor stuff.

You do not always get what you ask for in France, but the peasant at
least knows enough to tell you, "Oh! that's down in the Eure" or
"_Plus loin, par la,_" and at any rate, you feel that he is a
broad-gauge Frenchman through and through, whereas the English
labourer of the fields is a very "little Englander" indeed.

It is