Herbalist" to James I., the owner likewise at Holborn of one of the finest physic-gardens in England, where he cultivated "near eleven hundred sorts of plants," spent much time in thus moving about the country. The county of Essex was well known to him, and as he rode along "the Colchester highway from Londonward between Esterford"-now known as Kelvedon-"and Wittam." he noticed "by the wayes side" the small green leaved Hounds tongue, a rare and choice plant "against the biting of dogs." The Lesser Teasell or Shepheards-rod he found growing beside the highway "leading from Braintree to Henningham castle in Essex, and not in any other place except here and there a plant upon the highway from MuchDunmow to London." John Ray, too, was accustomed to make what he calls "Itineraries" in search of rare plants, and the records of several of these expeditions have fortunately been preserved. He frequently mentions choice plants as growing by the highway. The Maiden Pink he noticed "by the Roadsides on the sandy Hill you ascend going from Lenton to Nottingham, plentifully;" and the "Least Hares-ear on a bank by the Northern Road a little beyond Huntingdon." The very rare Lizard orchis he found growing on the right-hand side of the "great Highway going to a village called Grimsteed-Green from Dartford in Kent." In his Welsh Itinerary he noticed the Cambrian poppy "by the wayside near the upper end of Llanberis pool." Passing from Cornwall into Devon "on the hill which you ascend, after you are come over the passage to go to Plymouth," the exceedingly rare Eryngium campestre was growing in plenty. "I do not remember," he adds, "to have seen it anywhere else in England." It is interesting to know that the plant was flourishing on the very same spot last

summer. Numberless other instances might be quoted. The Dwale or Deadly Nightshade was growing "in a ditch by the highway side near Alton in Hampshire" when Dr. Robert Turner passed along the road about the year 1660; and shortly before that date Mr. John Goodyer, a famous botanist, saw enough maidenhair spleenwort growing on the banks of the road "between Rake and Headley neere Wollmer Forest," to "lode an horse therewith"; and as he passed an inclosure "on the right hand side of the way as you go from Droxford to Poppie hill in Hampshire" he noticed "the Bastard Tode-flax flowring abundantly."

These wide stretches of turf beside the public roads on which the gipsies were wont to encamp, remained untouched until comparatively modern times. In his "Lovers' Journey," our poet-botanist, George Crabbe, describes the road, beside which he found many interesting plants, which lay between Aldeburgh and Beccles. First "O'er a barren heath beside the coast," it ran; then "through lanes of burning sand," where the dark poppy flourished on the dry and sterile soil; across "common pasture wild and wide," past "scatter'd hovels on the barren green," over the "high-raised dam, with level fen on either side," where "a grave Flora scarcely deigns to bloom," beside "the rushy moor where the rare moss in secret shade is found." At length the country again becomes enclosed, and "See!" he says: The wholesome wormwood grows beside the way,

Where dew-press'd yet the dog-rose bends the spray; Fresh herbs the fields, fair shrubs the banks adorn,

And snow-white bloom falls flaky from the thorn;

No fostering hand they need, no sheltering wall;

They spring uncultured, and they bloom for all.

The condition of the countryside has doubtless greatly changed since George Crabbe wrote his famous "Tales." Still, in spite of the Commons Inclosure Act of 1845 and the consequent reclaiming of countless miles of roadside wastes, and the stubbing up of banks and hedgerows, many beautiful plants continue to flourish by the highway. Now, as in the sixteenth century, the wild clematis, named by Gerarde the Travellers-Joy because of its habit of "decking and adorning waies and hedges where people travel," gladdens the eyes with its fine white tufts of feathered seed-vessels which have earned for the plant its popular name of old-man's-beard. In the month of June the brambles are in flower along the tangled hedgerows, and the lovely dog-roses, and the fragrant honeysuckle. Many of our native shrubs, too, blossom on the banks by the way. side the dogwood, the spindle-tree, the privet, the buckthorn; and, sweetest of all, the may.

In the chalky districts of Hampshire there is no more characteristic plant along the roadsides than the Dark Mullein, a tall and handsome species with long, crowded spikes of bright yellow flowers, the stamens of which are covered with purple hairs. Sometimes, in company with the Dark Mullein, a few plants of the Wild Chicory with its large delicate skyblue flowers will be seen, but not often, for it is a rare plant in Hampshire. In other counties, however, it is more frequently met with. We once noticed it, in remarkable abun, dance, gracing the roadside near Medmenham, in Bucks, not far from the site of the old abbey, formerly a convent of Cistercian monks; and we know it well in West Cornwall. The Shepheards-rod of the old herbalist, "the knobbed heads of which are no bigger than a nutmeg," though but seldom seen in Hampshire, has yet man

aged to maintain its position in several places by the roadside for a long series of years. On the London road to Gosport, between the villages of Chawton and Farringdon, the tall and stately plant presents a dignified appearance in the thick hedgerow that borders the thoroughfare. In a similar situation, a few miles further on, a large patch of the scarce soapwort makes a fine show with its handsome flesh-colored flowers. Another rare Hampshire species, the Spreading Campanula, marked by its loose panicles of cup-shaped flowers of a light purple hue, still flourishes on a steep bank beside the high road on the very spot where it was first noticed by a distinguished botanist, who afterwards became Dean of Winchester, nearly a century ago.

In the West of England several choice plants, strange to the eye of an East Anglian, may sometimes be seen on the roadsides. In the neighborhood of Dartmouth the lovely Green Alkanet, with broad, ovate leaves, and exquisite flowers of a rich azure blue, is not uncommon. It is so striking a flower that the most unobservant traveller could hardly fail to notice it. We have also met with it on the hedge banks around Saltash, where the Wild or Bastard Balm is also found. This latter plant, though less beautiful, is even more conspicuous than the Green Alkanet, and its large creamy-white flowers blotched with pink or purple have a handsome appearance against the dark herbage of the hedgerow. In several localities in the district we noticed the Bastard Balm, among others "on a woody bank by a comb to the south of Saltash," perhaps the very spot where John Ray "first found it growing in great plenty on July 5th, 1662."

On the other hand, the eastern counties can show wayside flowers which are unknown in the West. rare Lesser Green-leaved

The very Hound's.

tongue found by John Ray "in London Road near Witham, but more plentifully about Braxted by the way-sides" has never travelled as far as Devon or Cornwall. In parts of Essex, especially in the north of the county, about Saffron Walden and Finchingfield, a striking clover peculiar to a few of the eastern counties will often be noticed on the wastes that border the roads. It is known as the Sulphur-colored clover, and its large heads of dull yellow flowers can hardly escape observation. John Ray mentions it as growing on the roadsides about Cherry Hinton in Cambridgeshire, and it is also to be seen, together with the Lesser Calamint, by his old home at Black Notley in Essex. The Lesser Calamint, is an attractive aromatic plant with light purple flowers, and in late summer and autumn it is one of the most characteristic of Essex wayside plants. As one travels in August along the high road near Thorpe-leThe Saturday Review.

Soken, in the vicinity of Walton-on-the Naze, a tall plant with large umbels of yellow flowers may be seen flourishing on the sides of the ditch that divides the roadway from the marshes beyond. For a space of some twenty or thirty yards it has taken possession of the wayside. Its interest lies, not merely in its great rarity-it only grows in one or two localities in England--but still more in the fact that it was growing on the same spot, and that spot within a few feet of the high road, as far back as the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Gerarde found it there, and speaks of it as Suphurwort, for "the roots thereof, as big as a man's thigh, are full of yellow sap or liquor, smelling not much unlike brimstone called sulphur, which hath induced some to call it Suphurwort." was afterwards noticed by the great Essex naturalist, John Ray, and there it was last summer in conspicuous abundance "by the high-way side."

It

It

It has been possible in old days for patriots and poets to speak of their country with a certain dignity and reserved, though proud, affection. has been possible, even when the country was at the height of wealth and dominion, and very easily possible when she stood in peril either of oppression from without or of internal ruin through her own errors and perversion. We need hardly recall the noble utterances of patriotism from the psalms in Zion's praise ("When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion," "My feet shall stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem!" "By the waters of Babylon," and so many other immortal verses)-from these outbursts of Zion's praise right down the course

of nations to John of Gaunt's lines on England, and Ireland's "Dark Rosaleen," and the odes to France. Patriotic utterances are probably the most familiar passages in all literature.

It would be hard to decide what to choose as the greatest embodiment of the praise of country, but many would turn to Virgil when, like a farmer coming from his vines and bees, and beholding far-off the towers of a lofty city, with rivers sliding under its ancient walls, he, too, is stirred to devotion before the greatness of Rome, that revelation of divine accomplishment, that fairest sight the world contained. But nobler, perhaps, even than the spirit of reverence and trust pervading Virgil's aspect of Rome was the ac

They harried all earth to make sure none escaped reprobation, They awakened unrest for a jest, in their newly-won borders, And jeered at the blood of their brethren betrayed by their orders, They instructed the ruled to rebel, the ruler to aid them;

And since such as obeyed them not fell, their Viceroys obeyed them.

To the second line we can attach no meaning whatever, but we hope there is one that escapes us. The third and fourth lines appear to contain a shameless misrepresentation of the South Africans; the fifth and sixth, almost beyond question, contain a libel on Lord Minto. And so, through seven indefinite stanzas, the thing goes onan obscure and unmusical outpouring of jargon, directed against this country, and especially against those particular qualities of freedom and tolerance and kindliness which we believe to be our country's noblest distinctions in history.

But worse than the obscurity and the hideous style, worse even than the attack upon England's highest ideals of life, is the temper of the attack. We know the mood of the poet who loves his country with a passion far beyond the common patriot's, and whose heart is torn with indignation at the sight of her errors, at his knowledge that she is departing from the great conception of her which his mind has formed. We know the proud scorn of Dante, and Milton's sorrow refusing comfort. There is a closer case in Wordsworth when he traced what he believed to be the signs of his country's corruption, because in her boundaries plain living and high thinking were no more, and peace, and fearful innocence, and pure religion had gone; and because men changed swords for ledgers, and deserted the student's bower for gold. Yet consider to what a passion of repentant love the thought of such reproaches drove him, with the anguish of one who for one moment

has dared to detect a single fault in the beauty of his belovéd's soul; "Now when I think of thee," he cries:

Now when I think of thee, and what thou art,

Verily, in the bottom of my heart,
Of those unfilial fears I am ashamed.
For dearly must we prize thee; we who
find

In thee a bulwark for the cause of men:
And I by my affection was beguiled:
What wonder if a Poet now and then,
Among the many movements of his
mind,

Felt for thee as a lover or a child.

Of such mood there is no trace in Mr. Kipling's "City of Brass." There can be no trace, because, as it appears to us, the Imperialist poets, of whom Mr. Kipling was the genius and, together with Henley, the originator, have loved England for her weakness and not for her strength. Other poets have sung a country dear for her reputation through the world. "Rule Britannia!" is not a great poem, but it was written to sustain our own freedom when we were at issue for its existence. Campbell's battle-odes have the splendor of a contest against almost overwhelming power. Tennyson's "Bury the Great Duke" was a grave incitement to maintain the stern ideal of duty and honor and devotion along whose paths the poet loved to think of our country moving. But with the Imperialist poets of fifteen years ago came the degrading note of brag and swagger-the spirit that cried in its own applause, "Judge, are we men of The Blood?"-that thought it virile to trample on the weak, and delighted in the conquest of little peoples because England's "whelps wanted blooding."

Henley, with his "Storm along, John!" was bad enough, no matter how bravely he made the bugles of England blow. Mr. Edgar Wallace is a true soldier-poet on his own line, and