affection for the relics of antiquity that time has spared, our
labours will not have been in vain or the object of this book
unattained.

[Illustration: Paradise Square, Banbury]




CHAPTER II

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ENGLAND


Under this alarming heading, "The Disappearance of England," the
_Gaulois_ recently published an article by M. Guy Dorval on the
erosion of the English coasts. The writer refers to the predictions of
certain British men of science that England will one day disappear
altogether beneath the waves, and imagines that we British folk are
seized by a popular panic. Our neighbours are trembling for the fate
of the _entente cordiale_, which would speedily vanish with vanishing
England; but they have been assured by some of their savants that the
rate of erosion is only one kilometre in a thousand years, and that
the danger of total extinction is somewhat remote. Professor Stanislas
Meunier, however, declares that our "panic" is based on scientific
facts. He tells us that the cliffs of Brighton are now one kilometre
farther away from the French coast than in the days of Queen
Elizabeth, and that those of Kent are six kilometres farther away than
in the Roman period. He compares our island to a large piece of sugar
in water, but we may rest assured that before we disappear beneath the