, pilots,
harbour bars--had Mr. George Bourne never heard of you?

[_1 Apr '09_]

I should like to assume that all enlightened and curious readers have
already perused this book and its forerunner, "The Bettesworth Book"
(Lamley and Co.), of which a cheap edition is soon to be had. But my
irritating mania for stopping facts in the street and gazing at them makes
it impossible for me to assume any such thing. I am perfectly certain that
to about 70 per cent. of you the name of George Bourne means naught. I
therefore need not apologize for offering the information that these books
are books. They set forth the psychology and the everything else of the
backbone, foundation, and original stock of the English race. They deal
with England. Naturally, the sacred name of England will call up in your
mind visions of the Carlton Club, Blenheim, Regent Street, Tubes,
Selfridge's, theatre stalls, the crowd at Lord's, and the brilliant
writers of the _New Age_. And these phenomena are a part of England; but I
tell you that they are all only the froth on the surface of Bettesworth
the labourer. If you regard this as a cryptic saying, read the two books,
and you will see light.

SWINBURNE

[Sidenote:_22 Apr. '09_]

On Good Friday night I was out in the High Street, at the cross-roads,
where the warp and the woof of the traffic assault each other under a
great glare of lamps. The shops were closed and black, except where a
tobacconist kept the tobacconist's bright and everlasting vigil; but above
the shops occasional rare windows were illuminated, giving
hints--dressing-tables, pictures, gas-globes--of intimate private lives. I
don't know why such hints should always seem to me pathetic, saddening;
but they do. And beneath them, through the dark defile of shutters,
motor-omnibuses roared and swayed and curved, too big for the street, and
dwarfing it. And automobiles threaded between them, and bicycles dared the
spaces that were left. From afar off there came a flying light, like a
shot out of a gun, and it grew into a man perched on a shuddering
contrivance that might have been invented by H.G. Wells, and swept
perilously into the contending currents, and by miracles emerged
untouched, and was gone, driven by the desire of the immortal soul within
the man. This strange thing happened again and again. The pavements were
crowded with hurrying or loitering souls, and the omnibuses and autos were
full of them: hundreds passed b