Feb., 1890. photographic survey of Warwickshire. 
45 
would be the value of good photographs of Bacon and of 
Shakespeare ; or of Queen Elizabeth and her minister Cecil. 
Looking forward into the centuries, we can discern a time 
when no less value will be assigned to Mrs. Cameron's grand 
photographs of such men as Herscliel and Tennyson ; with 
those by other workers of our good Queen Victoria, and her 
“ men of mind,” Salisbury and Gladstone ! 
We must accumulate portraits, then, of all our local 
worthies. And to them we must add street scenes—secured 
with the hand-camera—from all our towns ; delineations of 
the avocations of the people must also be obtained—from the 
country labourer in his smock-frock (a garment now rapidly 
disappearing) to the skilled artisan of the city, seated before 
his lathe. Nothing that illustrates contemporary life must be 
omitted—the policeman, the soldier, and the volunteer must 
adorn our albums; and we must go “ slumming ” to depict 
the shady side of life. 
Most congenial will be the task of recording the cottage 
and village scenery of Warwickshire. I have travelled round 
the world, I have spent many holidays in various parts of the 
British Isles; and I can assert, without fear of contradiction, 
that for characteristic pictures of rural and home life our 
county is unequalled. Take the string of Shakespearean 
villages along the Avon, for example :— 
“ Piping Pebworth, dancing Marston, 
Haunted Hillborough, hungry Grafton. 
Dadgeing Exball, Papist Wixford, 
Beggarly Broom, and drunken Bidford.” 
Let anyone who loves English scenery drive (with his 
camera under the box-seat) from Warwick, through Charlecote 
(the home of the Lucys), to Stratford ; and thence on to 
Evesham and Tewkesbury, calling at the villages named 
in the above quatrain (said to have been penned by 
Shakespeare) en route. Let him not hurry—take a fine week 
in, say, June—and I will answer for it that he will ever after¬ 
wards mark that excursion with the whitest of white stones. 
In writing this brief account of our county I must 
acknowledge my indebtedness to Mr. Sam Timmins’s recently 
published “ History of Warwickshire;” but I have also studied 
most of the original authorities from Dugdale to Halliwell. 
Our noble Free Reference Library contains practically every¬ 
thing that has been published on Warwickshire; and some 
useful county books are also to be found in the Old Library. 
