Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 8.djvu/323

This page needs to be proofread.

ii s. vii. APRIL 19, 1913.] NOTES AND QUERIES.


319


common. Then follows the highly interesting development of the establishment of the Turnpike Trusts by separate Acts of Parliament, which, from that of 1706 onwards, ran even into thousands. Not till 1895 did the last solitary Turnpike Trust come to an end, and the history of the 125 years or so, from the beginning of the Trusts to the coming of the railways, offers one of the most curious examples in the way of an anomaly to be found in the records of England. Eleven hundred of these Trusts were in existence at the time of the intro- duction of railways; they administered, when at the height of their popularity and efficiency, some- thing more than 20,000 miles of highway, being the chief lines of communication throughout the coun- try; they had the handling of immense sums of money, paid over to them for the maintenance of a public service essential to the very existence of a civilized nation, yet they were subject to no inspec- tion or control, and rendered no accounts.

Taken as a study of administration, the interest of the whole question of the highways is, however, centred in its relation to Government, and in the problem of consolidation. Mr. and Mrs. Webb have several pages of vigorous animadversion upon the supineness of the different Government depart- ments to which in successive generations the care of the highways belonged. Everything practi- cally was left to the operation of mere unguided change; and the important and advantageous change of having the roads under the care of sanitary rather than judicial authorities was insti- tuted, so to speak, unawares, and spread only by degrees. As for consolidation, in spite of some movement in that direction, the existence of 1,900 Local Authorities, pursuing diverse policies at will, and that often in regard to separate lengths of a few miles along the great main roads, attests that it is yet far to seek.

A word or two must be said, first in praise of the delightfully decisive and animated style in which this book is written; secondly, in praise of the clear arrangement of the facts; and thirdly, in acknowledgment of the copious ' Notes and Refer- ences ' appended to each chapter, in which we are given not only chapter and verse for each statement made in the text, and thereby an excellent biblio- graphy, but also an abundance of subordinate detail which should serve as most valuable instruc- tion towards further study.

Bohn's Popular Library. Nos. 1 to 20. (Bell &

Sons.)

WE are glad to offer a hearty welcome to this new enterprise, and Messrs. Bell are to be congratulated on their reissue of a Library that has already done such splendid service. Bohn's inexpensive editions of the less accessible classics date back as far as 1847. Clearly printed and neatly covered, these little volumes of which the price is no more than a shilling should find a place among that " score of bookes bound in black or red " which nowadays the very poorest scholar can afford to have at his "beddes head "indeed, is a poor enough creature if he goes without.

The first twenty numbers are fairly wide in their range. The series begins with ' Gulliver's Travels,' a reprint of the edition which, in 1899, formed part of Bohn's Standard Library ' "Works of Jonathan Swift.' Motley's ' Dutch Republic 'again a reprint from the Standard Library takes up three numbers,


and is prefaced by a sympathetic and adequate biographical sketch from the pen of the late Dr. Moncure Con way. Two volumes are devoted to Emersoa; they include the most famous and pro- found of the sets of essays, though not all of them. Kindred to these we have also Coleridge's ' Aids to Reflection.' We were glad to find Burton's ' Pil- grimage' from the 1893 Memorial Edition in- cluded here, as also ' Don Quixote,' ' Joseph An- drews,' and ' Evelina.' Young's ' Travels in France/ again, and Hooper's 'Waterloo' are well worth their place, as, of course, is Goethe's 'Dichtung und Wahrheit ' under its rather feeble English title- of ' Poetry and Truth. ' But we are a little doubt- ful whether Ebers's * Egyptian Princess ' can make out a good right to a standing in this company. To our thinking the gem of this first instalment is, however, the volume of Calverley's translations of Theocritus and Virgil's Eclogues, with Dr. Tyrrell's pleasant Introduction. These, apparently, have not been reissued till now since their first publication in the late sixties.

Old Eastbourne. By the Rev. Walter Budgen.

(Sherlock.) .

MR. BuDOEisr has set an example to his brother clergy, for while curate of Eastbourne he collected with great industry all the information he could obtain concerning its church, its clergy, and its people, and the result is both important and interesting. No one can take a walk through Old Eastbourne without feeling its contrast with the modern fashionable seaside resort 'but a few yards away, for directly one turns into the old High Street one feels that the clock has gone back two hundred years.

The author, like many others before him, started with a small purpose only to give a history of the old church; but the work grew upon him until he found himself writing a history of the parish, and we are glad he has done so, for he has unearthed much information that will interest the anti- quary, and \ve assure him that his hopes will be realized, and that his good work will "fill a place in local history" along with Wright's 'By-gone Eastbourne ' and Chambers's ' Eastbourne Me- mories.'

Mr. Budgen quotes from one of many charters preserved in France relating to English history, and recently brought to light by Dr. J. H. Round, whose labours are highly appreciated by readers of 'N. & Q.' This contains definite information that church and manor were established in 1054; and in Domesday Book it is stated that Edward the Confessor held the manor of Burne.

The natural advantages which make for the popularity of Eastbourne at the present time " were not less evident to our Saxon forefathers 1,400 years ago, if we may judge from the number and importance of their settlements in the district. Some families settled near the source of the Bourne stream, and their groups of dwellings on either bank came to be known as Upperwyk and Upper- ton i-espectively." Some of the settlers "called the lands after their own names" the Beoferings, the Ceolings, the Eoferings; but they were all within the present parish of Eastbourne.

Ralph de Nevill, Bishop of Chichester from 1226 to 1244, and Chancellor of England for sixteen years, in 1228 received from Henry III a grant of the manor of Eastbourne for his life : and in 1232