ry, gracious in its English
comeliness, the fair valleys and gentle swelling hills of South-west
Devon, wildly beautiful Dartmoor and the coloured splendour of Exmoor,
the patrician walls of Bath, and the high romance of ancient Bristol.
Under the Mendip is that gem of medieval art at Wells, one of the
loveliest buildings in Europe, and the unmatched road into the heart
of the hills that runs between the most stupendous cliffs in South
Britain. Not far away is Avalon, or Glastonbury if you will, the
mysteries of which are still being mysteriously unfathomed. From the
chalk uplands of our northern boundary we may look to the distant vale
in whose heart is the dream city of domes and spires--Oxford, and
trace the trench of England's greatest river until it is lost in the
many miles of woodland that surge up to the walls of Windsor. East and
south is that beautiful and still lonely country that lies between the
oldest Wessex and the sister, and ultimate vassal, kingdom of Sussex;
the country of the Meonwaras, a region of heather hills and quiet pine
combes that stretch down to the Solent Sea and the maritime heart of
England--Portsmouth.

Across the narrow bar of silver sea is an epitome of Wessex in
miniature, Vectis, where everything of nature described in these
following chapters may be found, a Lilliputian realm that contains not
only Wessex but morsels of East Anglia and fragments of Mercia and
Northumbria, combined with the lovely villages and pleasant towns that
only Wight can show.

All this storied beauty is without the scope of this book but within
the greater Wessex that came to the King who is the really
representative hero of his countrymen. The genius of the West Saxon
became for a time, and to a certain extent through force of
circumstance, a jealous and rather narrow insularity, without wide
views and generous ideals, but to this people may be ascribed some of
the higher traits that go to redeem our race. That their original
rough virtues were polished and refined by their beautiful environment
in the land that became their heritage few can doubt. That their
gradual absorption and amalgamation with the other races who fought
them for the possession of this "dear, dear land" has resulted in the
evolution of a people with a great and wonderful destiny is manifest
to the world, and is a factor in the future of mankind at which we can
but dimly guess.

[Illustration: THE DORSET COAST--MUPE BAY.]

The scen