2 12 THE EXETER ROAD 



beside the uufcithomably ancient, and so wlien the 

 Automobile Club visited Stonehenge, on Easter 

 Saturday 1899, all the cars and their occupants 

 were ^photographed beside the stones, to mark so 

 historic an occasion. 



XXXI 



Away beyond Stonehenge stretches Salisbury 

 Plain, in future to be vulgarised by military camps 

 and manoeuvres, and to become an Aldershot on a 

 larger scale, but hitherto a solitude as sublime in its 

 own way as Dartmoor and Exmoor. Dickens gives us 

 his meed of appreciation of this wild country, and 

 finds the boundless prairies of America tame by 

 comparison. 



' Now,' he says, writing when on his visit to 

 America, ' a prairie is undoubtedly worth seeing, but 

 more that one may say one has seen it, than for any 

 sublimity it possesses in itself . . . You stand upon 

 the prairie and see the unbroken horizon all round 

 you. You are on a great plain, which -is like a sea 

 without water, I am exceedingly fond of wild and 

 lonely scenery, and believe that I have the faculty of 

 being as much impressed by it as any man living. 

 But the prairie fell, by far, short of my preconceived 

 idea. I felt no such emotions as I do in crossing- 

 Salisbury Plain. The excessive flatness of the scene 

 makes it dreary, but tame. Grandeur is certainly 

 not its characteristic ... to say that the sight is a 



