As we leave the town we cannot but admire its cleanliness and beautiful location. It skirts both banks of the River Avon and is surrounded by an amphitheater of wooded hills. To our notion it is the finest of inland English resort towns and certainly none has a more varied past, nor has any other figured so extensively in literature. It is about one hundred miles from London by road, and is a favorite goal for the motorist from that city.
The road to London is a fine broad highway leading through Marlborough and Reading. It proves a splendid farewell run to our third long motor tour through Britain; we have covered in all nearly twenty thousand miles of highways and byways during varying weather. If there has been much sunshine, there have also been weeks of rain and many lowering gloomy days. There is scarce an historic shrine of importance in the Kingdom that has escaped us and we have visited hundreds of odd corners not even mentioned in the guide-books. And, best of all, we have come to know the people and have gained considerable familiarity with their institutions, which has not lessened our respect and admiration for the Motherland. Indeed, I feel that our experience sufficiently warrants a chapter on the English at home—as we saw them—and I make no apology for concluding this book with such. It is not free from criticism, I know, but could an honest observer write more favorably of our own country—if conditions were such that he might tour our populous states as thoroughly as we have done Britain?
Our last day on the road fulfills the ideal of English midsummer; the storm has passed, leaving the country fresh and bright; green fields alternate with the waving gold of the ripening harvest, and here and there we pass an old village or a solitary cottage by the roadside—all typical of the rural England we have come to love so much. We drive leisurely over the fine road and linger an hour or two in Marlborough after luncheon at the Ailesbury Arms, whose excellence we have proven on previous occasions. We find an antique-shop here with a store of old silver that rivals our discovery in Largo, and the prices asked are no higher.
From Reading we follow the Thames River road, which for some miles skirts the very shore of the historic stream and passes within a distant view of the towers of Windsor, rising in all their romantic majesty against the sunset sky. From Windsor we follow the familiar road to the heart of the teeming metropolis and our third long motor pilgrimage in Summer Britain is at its close.
“A DISTANT VIEW OF THE TOWERS OF WINDSOR”
From original painting by the late Edward Moran
XX
THE ENGLISH AND THEIR INSTITUTIONS
One who has spent many months in the United Kingdom, traveling about twenty thousand miles by motor and considerably by train, and who has met and conversed with the common people of every section of the country in the most retired nooks and in metropolitan cities, may, I hope without undue assumption, venture a few remarks on the English people and their institutions. One would be a dull observer indeed if he did not, with the opportunities which we had, see and learn many things concerning present-day Britain.