I. Guide Books: An Introduction,
II. On Going Back,
III. Walking and Cycling,
IV. Seeking a Shelter,
V. Wind, Wave, and Spirit,
VI. By Swallowfield,
VII. Roman Calleva,
VIII. A Cold Day at Silchester,
IX. Rural Rides,
X. The Last of his Name,
XI. Salisbury and its Doves,
XII. Whitesheet Hill,
XIII. Bath and Wells Revisited,
XIV. The Return of the Native,
XV. Summer Days on the Otter,
XVI. In Praise of the Cow,
XVII. An Old Road Leading Nowhere,
XVIII. Branscombe,
XIX. A Abbotsbury,
XX. Salisbury Revisited,
XXI. Stonehenge,
XXII. The Tillage and "The Stones,"
XXIII. Following a River,
XXIV. Troston,
XXV. My Friend Jack,
Chapter One: Guide-Books: An Introduction
Guide-books are so many that it seems probable we have more
than any other country - possibly more than all the rest of the
universe together. Every county has a little library of its
own - guides to its towns, churches, abbeys, castles, rivers,
mountains; finally, to the county as a whole. They are of all
prices and all sizes, from the diminutive paper-covered
booklet, worth a penny, to the stout cloth-bound octavo volume
which costs eight or ten or twelve shillings, or to the
gigantic folio county history, the huge repository from which
the guide-book maker gets his materials. For these great
works are also guide-books, containing everything we want to
learn, only made on so huge a scale as to be suited to the
coat pockets of Brobdingnagians rather than of little ordinary
men. The wonder of it all comes in when we find that these
books, however old and comparatively worthless they may be,
are practically never wholly out of date. When a new work is
brought out (dozens appear annually) and, say, five thousand
copies sold, it does not throw as many, or indeed any, copies
of the old book out of circulation: it supersedes nothing. If
any man can indulge in the luxury of a new up-to-date guide to
any place, and gets rid of his old one (a rare thing to do),
this will be snapped up by poorer men, who will treasure it
and hand it down or on to others. Editions of 1860-50-40, and
older, are still prized, not merely as keepsakes but for study
or reference. Any one can prove this by going the round of a
dozen second-hand booksellers in his own district in London.
There will be tons of literary rubbish, and good stuff old and
new, but few guidebooks - in some cases not one. If you ask
your man at a venture for, say, a guide to Hampshire, he will
most probably tell you that he has not one in stock; then, in
his anxiety to do business, he will, perhaps, fish out a guide
to Derbyshire, dated 1854 - a shabby old book - and offer it
for four or five shillings, the price of a Crabbe in eight
volumes, or of Gibbon's Decline and Fall in six volumes, bound
in calf. Talk to this man, and to the other eleven, and they
will tell you that there is always a sale for guide-books
- that the supply does not keep pace with the demand. It may be
taken as a fact that most of the books of this kind published
during the last half-century - many millions of copies in the
aggregate - are still in existence and are valued possessions.
There is nothing to quarrel with in all this. As a people we
run about a great deal; and having curious minds we naturally
wish to know all there is to be known, or all that is
interesting to know, about the places we visit. Then, again,
our time as a rule being limited, we want the whole matter
- history, antiquities, places of interest in the neighbourhood,
etc. in a nutshell. The brief book serves its purpose well
enough; but it is not thrown away like the newspaper and the
magazines; however cheap and badly got up it may be, it is
taken home to serve another purpose, to be a help to memory,
and nobody can have it until its owner removes himself (but
not his possessions) from this planet; or until the broker
seizes his belongings, and guide-books, together with other
books, are disposed of in packages by the auctioneer.
In all this we see that guide-books are very important to us,
and that there is little or no fault to be found with them,
since even the worst give some guidance and enable us in
after times mentally to revisit distant places. It may then
be said that there are really no bad guide-books, and that
those that are good in the highest sense are beyond praise. A
reverential sentiment, which is almost religious in character,
connects itself in our minds with the very name of Murray. It
is, however, possible to make an injudicious use of these
books, and by so doing to miss the fine point of many a
pleasure. The very fact that these books are guides to us and
invaluable, and that we readily acquire the habit of taking
them about with us and consulting them at frequent intervals,
comes between us and that rarest and most exquisite enjoyment
to be experienced amidst novel scenes. He that visits a place
new to him for some special object rightly informs himself of
all that the book can tell him. The knowledge may be useful;
pleasure is with him a secondary object. But if pleasure be
the main object, it will only be experienced in the highest
degree by him who goes without book and discovers what old
Fuller called the "observables" for himself. There will
be no mental pictures previously formed; consequently what is
found will not disappoint. When the mind has been permitted
to dwell beforehand on any scene, then, however beautiful or
grand it may be, the element of surprise is wanting and
admiration is weak.
Enter page number
Next
Page 1 of 81
Words from 1 to 1007
of 82198
