Nor are buildings the only things that are
passing away. The extensive use of motor-cars and highway vandalism
are destroying the peculiar beauty of the English roadside. The
swift-speeding cars create clouds of white dust which settles upon the
hedges and trees, covering them with it and obscuring the wayside
flowers and hiding all their attractiveness. Corn and grass are
injured and destroyed by the dust clouds. The charm and poetry of the
country walk are destroyed by motoring demons, and the wayside
cottage-gardens, once the most attractive feature of the English
landscape, are ruined. The elder England, too, is vanishing in the
modes, habits, and manners of her people. Never was the truth of the
old oft-quoted Latin proverb--_Tempora mutantur, et nos mutamur in
illis_--so pathetically emphatic as it is to-day. The people are
changing in their habits and modes of thought. They no longer take
pleasure in the simple joys of their forefathers. Hence in our
chronicle of Vanishing England we shall have to refer to some of those
strange customs which date back to primeval ages, but which the
railways, excursion trains, and the schoolmaster in a few years will
render obsolete.
In recording the England that is vanishing the artist's pencil will
play a more prominent part than the writer's pen.
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