Where to Observe 



52i 



WHERE TO OBSERVE. 



Following up the principle which we have advocated 

 that education should be based as much as possible upon 

 familiarity with actual facts, we purpose to compile for the 

 convenience of our readers a sort of guide to places of his- 

 torical or natural interest which may be visited. It is far 

 too much the custom to consider, respecting most of these, 

 that they have interest only for the antiquarian investigator. 

 Young persons are allowed to grow up in the near neigh- 

 bourhood of most instructive fragments of the past without 

 having their attention directed to them. They learn by rote 

 from their school books that the Romans once occupied 

 Britain, but are never taken to the remains of the Roman villa 

 which are within a walk. They visit Sunday after Sunday 

 the venerable parish church, but are told nothing as to when 

 it was built or what it reveals concerning the lives and attain- 

 ments of their own ancestors. They make their frequent rail- 

 way journeys and enjoy the views and the change of scene, 

 but little or nothing is done to heighten that enjoyment by 

 giving them an insight either as regards the human interest 

 attaching to the places which they pass or the natural causes 

 of the varied phenomena presented by the fields and the hills. 



Much excellent information of the kind suggested is to 

 be found in local handbooks and guides, but apart from the 

 fact that these are rarely accessible excepting on the spot, the 

 facts given are usually disjointed in arrangement. A grave 

 defect in such records is that they remain at their best purely 

 local. A host of county and city histories are in our libraries 

 which contain full and accurate statements, and it will be part 

 of our vocation to direct attention to some of these. 



In the compilation of such a general index as we con- 

 template it will obviously be impossible to proceed in other 

 than a method for the most part fragmentary. We shall 



