It may seem that as Americans we were rather unpatriotic to pass within a few miles of the ancestral country of the Washingtons without visiting it, but such was the case.  It is not given much space in the guide-books and it came to us only as an afterthought.  It was but five or six miles from Northampton, through which we passed.  In the old church at Brington is the tomb of George Washington’s great-great-great-grandfather and also one of the houses which was occupied by his relatives.  In the same section is Sulgrave Manor, the home of the Washingtons for several generations, which still has over its front doorway the Washington coat-of-arms.  In the same vicinity and near the farmhouse where George Eliot was born is Nuneaton, a place where she spent much of her life and to which numerous references are made in her novels.

In Scotland we also missed much, but very little that we could have reached without consuming considerably more time.  A day’s trip north of Edinburgh, across the Firth of Forth into Fife, would have enabled us to visit Loch Leven and its castle, where Queen Mary was held prisoner and was rescued by young Douglas, whom she afterward unfortunately married.  Had we started two or three hours earlier on our trip to Abbottsford and Melrose, we could easily have reached Jedburgh and Kelso, at each of which there are interesting abbey ruins.  Of course it would have been a fine thing to go to the extreme northern point of Scotland, known as John O’ Groats, but this, at the rate we traveled, would have consumed two or three days.  The country is not specially interesting and has few historical associations.  Tourists make this trip chiefly to be able to say they have covered the Kingdom from Lands End to John O’ Groats.

[Illustration:  The Caledonian coast.

From Painting by D. Sherrin.]

I have said little of the larger cities—­we did not stop long in any of these.  The chief delight of motoring in Britain is seeing the country and the out-of-the-way places.  In the cities, where one may spend days and where the train service and other methods of transportation in the place and its suburbs are practically unlimited, one can ill afford to linger with his car in the garage much of the time.  Of London I have already spoken.  Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Bristol, Birmingham, Edinburgh and Glasgow are examples to my point.  We had visited nearly all of these by rail, but in again planning a tour by car I should not stop at such places for any length of time and should avoid passing through them whenever practicable.