THE OLD ENGLISH ROAD

Evening Star, Issue 19518, 28 March 1927, Page 2

THE OLD ENGLISH ROAD

(HANGED CONDITIOKS Time was, and that not long distant, when a sojourner in a country village could slumber undisturbed through a summer afternoon. To-day, the scene is changed. Heralded by dust and followed by smell, motor cars and motor cycles thunder past. The, song of birds is drowned by hoot of horn and thud of engine; the fuchsia bushes at the cottage doors are thick with dust. . . . The road, fifty years ago well-nigh deserted, has reverted to an earlier type and is once more the highway of commerce and of pleasure. But its constituents and its aspect are far different from that of the centuries when it was at once the Elayground and the workshop of Engtnd. ... The road was also the market-place of England, and in that market-place wrought merchants of every grade, from the wealthy trader of Flanders, riding beside pack-horses heavily laden with nis country’s wares, to the humble pedlar, his stock upon his back, trudging through mud and mire on his daily round or to the nearest fair. Antolycus found as ready a sale for his “merry ballads” as for his silk and thread. Queer stuff his ballads were from his own description, and hardly less strange wore the medleys sung in inn parlors by wandering minstrels to the accompaniment of ham, lute, and guitar. Yet these nomacflc musicians kept alive the sacred flame of England poesy as truly as did the more romantic troubadours that of Krpm. .......^

Every form of travel fell under the head of pilgrimage, from a leisurely promenade through rural England to a transmarine journey which occupied years. The ultimate goal might be Jerusalem, but a deteur through Spain, a stay in Venice to witness the espousal of the Adriatic, and an exploration of the cities of Asia Minor excited no comment, for time was of no importance, since pilgrimage was the most blessed state that man could be In. The custom served useful purposes oute side its primary intent. In an ago when newspapers wore unknown and books were few, these travellers carried the newss of other lands to home dwellers, and the unlettered homes of northern Europe were brought into touch with the learning and refinement of ancient civilisations. It satisfied that _ passion for adventure to which pilgrimage, Elizabethan exploration, and modern colonisation have all in turn ministered. ... The most redoubtable horseman of the eighteenth century was John Wesley. All through his active life, he rode from sixty to seventy miles a day; after he was eighty years of age his record for a year was from four to five thousand miles. Often he was in the saddle by 3 a.m. and, when weather permitted, it was his custom to ride with loose rein, reading _ history the while.—-A. M. Pagan, in ‘ The Empire Review.’