Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine

SKETCHES OF TRAVEL IN NORMANDY AND MAINE
BY EDWARD A. FREEMAN WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM DRAWINGS BY THE AUTHOR AND A PREFACE BY W.H. HUTTON, B.D. FELLOW AND TUTOR OF S. JOHN'S COLLEGE, OXFORD
London
MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1897 All rights reserved
Richard Clay and Sons, Limited, LONDON AND BUNGAY.
The first eight and the last four of these sketches appeared in the Saturday Review , the others in the Guardian . They are here reprinted with a few omissions, but with no other alteration. The permission courteously given to reproduce them is gratefully acknowledged.
FLORENCE FREEMAN.
Beyond doubt the finished historian must be a traveller: he must see with his own eyes the true look of a wide land; he must see, too, with his eyes the very spots where great events happened; he must mark the lie of a city, and take in, as far as a non-technical eye can, all that is special about a battle-field.
Thus the keenness of his interest in the architecture and the history that could be studied and learnt in every little town made him to the last the most untiring and enthusiastic of historical pilgrims. It is impossible to read his letters, so fresh and natural yet so full of a rare knowledge and insight, without seeing how thoroughly he had succeeded in achieving in himself that union of the traveller and the historian which adds so immeasurably to the powers of each. And that is what makes his letters from foreign lands so delightful to read, and his sketches (published and republished from time to time during the last thirty years) so illuminative. No one, I think, who has seen the places he writes of in his Historical and Architectural Sketches or in his Sketches from French Travel , with the books in his hand, will deny that they have added tenfold to his pleasure. Mr. Freeman tells you what to see and how to see it,—just what you want to know and what you ought to know. It would be an impertinence in me to point out the breadth or the accuracy of his knowledge as it appears in these sketches, which can be read again and again with new pleasure. But I think it may be said without exaggeration that in all the great work that Mr. Freeman did he did nothing better than this. He never writes down to his readers: he expects to find in them something of his own interest in the buildings and their makers; and he supplies the knowledge which only the traveller who is also a historian has at hand.