the master map-makers of that reign. The book opens with an account of
the first inhabitants of Britain, and their manners and customs; how
the Romans fared, and what antiquities they left behind, with copious
plates of Roman coins. By degrees we come down, through Saxons and
Normans, to that work which was peculiarly Camden's, the topographical
antiquarianism. He begins with Cornwall, "that region which, according
to the geographers, is the first of all Britain," and then proceeds to
what he calls "Denshire" and we Devonshire, a county, as he remarks,
"barbarous on either side."

With page 822 he finds himself at the end of his last English county,
Northumberland, looking across the Tweed to Berwick, "the strongest
hold in all Britain," where it is "no marvel that soldiers without
other light do play here all night long at dice, considering the side
light that the sunbeams cast all night long." This rather exaggerated
statement is evidently that of a man accustomed to look upon Berwick
as the northernmost point of his country, as we shall all do, no
doubt, when Scotland has secured Home Rule. We are, therefore, not
surprised to find Scotland added, in a kind of hurried appendix, in
special honour to James I and VI. The introduction to the Scottish
section is in a queer tone of banter; Camden knows little and cares
less about the "commonwealth of the Scots," and "withall will lightly
pass over it." In point of fact, he gets to Duncansby Head in
fifty-two pages, and not without some considerable slips of
information. Ireland interests him more, and he finally closes with a
sheet of learned gossip about the outlying islands.

The scope of Camden's work did not give Philémon Holland much
opportunity for spreading the wings of his style. Anxious to present
Camden fairly, the translator is curiously uneven in manner, now