From Gretna Green to Land's End A LITERARY JOURNEY IN ENGLAND _By_ KATHARINE LEE BATES _Professor of English Literature in Wellesley College_ WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS BY KATHARINE COMAN NEW YORK THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. PUBLISHERS COPYRIGHT, 1907 BY THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY Published, October, 1907 THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A. TO MY FARING-MATES KATHARINE COMAN AND ANNIE BEECHER SCOVILLE _Daffodil and furze and wheat, Shining paths for truant feet; From that golden blossoming Wilted sprays are all I bring. You who know their fault the best, To their fault be tenderest, For a breath of fragrant days Whispers you from wilted sprays._ "_Some Shires, Joseph-like, have a better coloured coat than others; and some, with Benjamin, have a more bountiful mess of meat belonging to them. Yet every County hath a child's proportion._" THOMAS FULLER. These summer wanderings through the west of England were undertaken at the request of _The Chautauquan_, from whose pages the bulk of this material is reprinted. But the chronicle of this recent journey has been supplemented, as the text indicates, by earlier memories. K. L. B. TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE THE BORDER 1 THE LAKE COUNTRY 30 THREE RUSH-BEARINGS 52 A GROUP OF INDUSTRIAL COUNTIES 76 THE HEART OF ENGLAND--WARWICKSHIRE 137 THE COTSWOLDS 184 OXFORD 199 COUNTIES OF THE SEVERN VALLEY 230 SOMERSET AND DEVONSHIRE 298 CORNWALL 350 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM ORIGINAL PHOTOGRAPHS Wordsworth's Home at Cockermouth _Frontispiece_ PAGE King Edward's Tower, Lanercost Abbey 26 Island in Grasmere Lake 44 The Rush-Bearing at Grasmere 60 The Quadrant, Liverpool 78 The Trent and Mersey Canal 90 In the Potteries--A Child-Mother 128 Feeding the Peacocks at Warwick Castle 160 Wilmcote, the Birthplace of Shakespeare's Mother 166 Charlecote Park Entrance 170