The Project Gutenberg EBook of Afoot in England, by W.H. Hudson

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Title: Afoot in England

Author: W.H. Hudson

Release Date: April, 2004 [EBook #5406]
Posting Date: March 28, 2009

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AFOOT IN ENGLAND ***

Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer

AFOOT IN ENGLAND

By W.H. Hudson

Contents

I. Guide Books: An Introduction,
II. On Going Back,
III. Walking and Cycling,
IV. Seeking a Shelter,
V. Wind, Wave, and Spirit,
VI. By Swallowfield,
VII. Roman Calleva,
VIII. A Cold Day at Silchester,
IX. Rural Rides,
X. The Last of his Name,
XI. Salisbury and its Doves,
XII. Whitesheet Hill,
XIII. Bath and Wells Revisited,
XIV. The Return of the Native,
XV. Summer Days on the Otter,
XVI. In Praise of the Cow,
XVII. An Old Road Leading Nowhere,
XVIII. Branscombe,
XIX. A Abbotsbury,
XX. Salisbury Revisited,
XXI. Stonehenge,
XXII. The Tillage and "The Stones,"
XXIII. Following a River,
XXIV. Troston,
XXV. My Friend Jack,

Chapter One: Guide-Books: An Introduction

Guide-books are so many that it seems probable we have more than any
other country--possibly more than all the rest of the universe together.
Every county has a little library of its own--guides to its towns,
churches, abbeys, castles, rivers, mountains; finally, to the county
as a whole. They are of all prices and all sizes, from the diminutive
paper-covered booklet, worth a penny, to the stout cloth-bound octavo
volume which costs eight or ten or twelve shillings, or to the gigantic
folio county history, the huge repository from which the guide-book
maker gets his materials. For these great works are also guide-books,
containing everything we want to learn, only made on so huge a scale
as to be suited to the coat pockets of Brobdingnagians rather than of
little ordinary men. The wonder of it all comes in when we find that
these books, however old and comparatively worthless they may be, are
practically never wholly out of date. When a new work is brought out
(dozens appear annually) and, say, five thousand