HAMILTON SCIENTIFIC ASSOCIATION. 97 



Vacation Rambles in the Old V.^j\d—JihLstrnted. 



'By P. L, Serin) en. 



May io, 1906. 



It may seem odd, and is, to those of us who have always lived 

 ill this newly-settled country — which has no written history 

 prior to the latter part of the fifteenth century — to stand in the 

 presence and environs of tombs, crypts, churches, cathedrals, 

 castles and palaces whose begiiuiings are so remote in point of 

 time as to be shrouded in the maze of antiquity. 



To us at least it was a new, strange and novel experience to 

 tread the soil of our forefathers where, according to history, one is 

 led to conclude almost every acre has once been a battlefield, every 

 new vista more or less celebrated in song or story, and sad to re- 

 late, where very many homes were the abodes of cruelty and op- 

 pression, where the chief vocation of mankind was war, and where 

 men spent the most of their time, thought and energ}' m devising 

 means to slay each other. One has only for a short time to study 

 the thousand and one weapons, such as "swords, spears, lances, 

 tomahawks, cutlasses, and cleavers, of all shapes and sizes, pistols 

 and guns of every description, besides other instruments of torture, 

 stored within the old tower of London, to fully realize that this is 

 no idle assertion. 



But we gladly turn from this dark picture to a brighter, for 

 Britain is a land of beauty as well as of history. Biography also 

 teaches us that no nation on the face of this footstool has been more 

 prolific in giving to the world illustrious names to grace the realms 

 of literature, poetry, science, art, mathematics and philosophy than 

 has Great Britain. I need not here and now be more explicit in 

 naming her heroes who have been victorious in the arts of peace 

 no less than those who were mighty in war. Suffice it to say that 



