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. The graphic sketches
that illustrate this book are far more valuable and helpful to the
discernment of the things that remain than the most effective
descriptions. We have tried together to gather up the fragments that
remain that nothing be lost; and though there may be much that we have
not gathered, the examples herein given of some of the treasures that
are left may be useful in creating a greater reverence for the work
bequeathed to us by our forefathers, and in strengthening the hands of
those who would preserve them. Happily we are still able to use the
present participle, not the past. It is vanishing England, not
vanished, of which we treat; and if we can succeed in promoting an