he schoolmaster in a few years will
render obsolete.

In recording the England that is vanishing the artist's pencil will
play a more prominent part than the writer's pen. The graphic sketches
that illustrate this book are far more valuable and helpful to the
discernment of the things that remain than the most effective
descriptions. We have tried together to gather up the fragments that
remain that nothing be lost; and though there may be much that we have
not gathered, the examples herein given of some of the treasures that
are left may be useful in creating a greater reverence for the work
bequeathed to us by our forefathers, and in strengthening the hands of
those who would preserve them. Happily we are still able to use the
present participle, not the past. It is vanishing England, not
vanished, of which we treat; and if we can succeed in promoting an
affection for the relics of antiquity that time has spared, our
labours will not have been in vain or the object of this book
unattained.

[Illustration: Paradise Square, Banbury]

CHAPTER II

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ENGLAND

Under this alarming heading, "The Disappearance of England," the
_Gaulois_ recently published an article by M. Guy Dorval on the
erosion of the English coasts. The writer refers to the predictions of
certain British men of science that England will one day disappear
altogether beneath the waves, and imagines that we British folk are
seized by a popular panic. Our neighbours are trembling for the fate
of the _entente cordiale_, which would speedily vanish with vanishing
England; but they have been assured by some of their savants that the
rate of erosion is only one kilometre in a thousand years, and that
the danger of total extinction is somewhat remote. Professor Stanislas
Meunier, however, declares that our "panic" is based on scientific
facts. He tells us that the cliffs of Brighton are now one kilometre
farther away from the French coast than in the days of Queen
Elizabeth, and that those of Kent are six kilometres farther away than
in the Roman period. He compares our island to a large piece of sugar
in water, but we may rest assured that before we disappear beneath the
waves the period which must elapse would be greater than the longest
civilizations known in history. So we may hope to be able to sing
"Rule Britannia" for many a long year.

Coast erosion is, however, a serious problem, and has caused the
destruction of many a