It is true that the railway companies are doing all in their power to make holidays at home welcome and inexpensive. Their enterprise in this respect has no limits. But we cannot live on cheap railway tickets alone, whether single or return. Something should be done--and the newspapers could help--to establish in all attractive districts a reasonable tariff for board and lodging. It is only thus that Great Britain will be made popular during the holiday season, and that the great stream of gold--the holiday-making Pactolus--will be drawn from the Continent to nourish our own country sides and rural folk. It seems to be certain that, during the reign of the old stage coach, life in rustic England was cheaper than it is to-day. At any rate we must account in some way or other for the immense number of county histories and illustrated topographical books which teemed from the press from the middle of the eighteenth century to the time of J. M. W. Turner. To study these works is to be sure that our forefathers took the greatest delight in their own country, and that huge sums of money were spent in procuring fine sketches and adequate engravings. Side by side with these books on British topography were volumes on foreign travel, like those by William Alexander, who in 1792 accompanied Lord Macartney's embassy to China, where he made many exquisite sketches, brimful of humour and playful observation. John Webber, R.A., in 1776, accompanied Captain Cook on his third and last voyage, and made a drawing of Cook's death, which Byrne and Bartolozzi engraved. Two other Royal Academicians, Thomas and William Daniell, made India their sketching-ground, and in their great work on "Oriental Scenery," published in 1808, they devoted six volumes to a subject as fascinating as it was unhackneyed. Many other artists, too, travelled and made sketches for books, ranging from Girtin's Paris Views to Turner's "Rivers of France," and from Sir David Wilkie's Eastern sketches, reproduced in lithography by Nash, to the familiar work of Prout, Harding, J. F. Lewis, R.A., and Louis Haghe.