narrow byways and the country generally lacked interest.  We passed through Banbury, whose cross, famous in nursery rhyme, is only modern.  At Waddesdon we saw the most up-to-date and best ordered village we came across in England, with a fine new hotel, the Five Arrows, glittering in fresh paint.  We learned that this village was built and practically owned by Baron Rothschild, and just adjoining it was the estate which he had laid out.  The gentleman of whom we inquired courteously offered to take us into the great park, and we learned that he was the head landscape gardener.  The palace is modern, of Gothic architecture, and crowns an eminence in the park.  It contains a picture gallery, with examples of the works of many great masters, which is open to the public on stated days of the week.

On reaching London, we found that our tour of the Midlands had covered a little less than eight hundred miles, which shows how much that distance means in Britain when measured in places of historic and literary importance, of which we really visited only a few of those directly on the route of our journey or lying easily adjacent to it.

VI

LONDON TO LAND’S END

The road from London to Southampton is one of the oldest in the Kingdom and passes many places of historic interest.  In early days this highway, leading from one of the main seaports through the ancient Saxon capital, was of great importance.  Over this road we began the trip suggested by the Touring Secretary of the Motor Union.  As usual, we were late in getting started and it was well after noon when we were clear of the city.  At Kingston-on-Thames, practically a suburb, filled with villas of wealthy Londoners, we stopped for lunch at the Griffin Hotel, a fine old inn whose antiquity was not considered sufficient to atone for bad service, which was sometimes the case.  Kingston has a history as ancient as that of the capital itself.  Its name is peculiar in that it was not derived from King’s Town, but from King’s Stone; and at the town crossing is the identical stone, so says tradition, upon which the Saxon kings were crowned.  It would seem to one that this historic bit of rock would form a more fitting pedestal for the English coronation chair than the old Scottish stone from Dunstafnage Castle.

After a short run from Kingston, we passed down High Street, Guildford, which, a well qualified authority declares, is “one of the most picturesque streets in England.”  Guildford might well detain for a day or more anyone whose time will permit him to travel more leisurely than ours did.  William Cobbett, the author and philosopher, who was born and lived many years near by, declared it “the happiest looking town he ever knew”—­just why, I do not know.  The street with the huge town clock projecting half way across on one side, the Seventeenth Century Town Hall with its massive Greek portico on the other, and a queerly assorted row of many-gabled buildings following its winding way, looked odd enough, but as to Guildford’s happiness, a closer acquaintance would be necessary.