30 Conversazione. 
can tell. About such places there is very often nothing to be learnt 
upon the spot by the visitor but some trumpery story—some exag- 
gerated or distorted tradition. Indeed this is sometimes the case, 
I am sorry to say, even with buildings whose history has been 
written; but so long as books are published in so costly a style that 
none but the wealthiest can afford to buy them, small people are 
likely to remain ignorant. 
I remember once visiting Glastonbury Abbey, a place whose 
history has been pretty well ascertained in fine folio volumes, and 
I was informed by the enlightened individual who conducted me 
over the ruins (and to whom of course I was obliged to make, for 
his information, a valuable return), that the Abbey had been built, 
“as he’d heer’d tell,” by Oliver Cromwell. “Then” said I, “who 
do they say pulled it down?” He “warn’t quite sure, but did 
believe it war William Norman.” Now that the county of Somerset 
has its Archxologieal Society, we may presume that no such dis- 
tressing confusion of national history may ever occur again, to shock 
the nerves of visitors. I mention this absurdity not so much for 
its own sake, as because it leads one to think whether one of the uses 
of such a Society as the present may not perhaps be that of making 
local information better known; and putting it within reach of 
many who can’t afford to pay much for it. It is (as I have already 
said) not only literary and educated people who like to know about 
their own neighbourhood, but I do believe that speculations upon 
old castle and abbey stories often furnish evening talk for cottage 
firesides. In almost every parish you have somebody or other to 
play the part of “Old Mortality,” who picks up fragments of tra- 
dition, and is the oracle of past times: who takes pride in “mindin 
an old house;” or “a deal more stained glass im the church 
windows, than there is now;” or who has, perhaps, got some 
wonderful treasure of an old writing, coins that have been dug up, 
and the like. One meets with such people very often. 
And so again, when newspapers contain, as they sometimes do, 
articles about some matter of local curiosity, you will find that such 
articles are read with interest by the people of the place to which 
they relate. All this shows that the desire to know something 
about their homes and neighbourhood is popular enough; and that 
all such persons want is only some cheap publication, to furnish 
them with the rational amusement. Newspapers are, no doubt, 
useful in this way, as they now-a-days fall into everybody’s hands. 
But being too cumbrous in size for common preservation, they are 
read and thrown aside. 
Many articles again, and notices of county history and antiquities, 
find their way to magazines and other periodicals. Perhaps some 
means might be devised by which such communications might 
appear not in remote, but in local publications. If all that is seat- 
tered here or there were collected and embodied, so that any one 
