A. R. Hope (Ascott Robert Hope) Moncrieff - Surrey

SURREY BLACKS POPULAR SERIES of COLOUR BOOKS

BLUEBELLS, RIPLEY.
BLUEBELLS, RIPLEY.

THE illustrations in this book speak for themselves. The writer feels it no easy undertaking to strike bass chords in prose that may worthily accompany these high notes of Surreys fame; but he has done his best towards pointing out its special charm of varied formation and surface, here displayed upon the course of excursions made in several directions, so as to bring in all the chief features. To author as well as artist, both at least long sojourners in this choice county that gives homes to many an adopted son, the work has been a labour of love. The moral enforced at once by pen and pencil is that few great cities are so lucky as London in having at its back-doors a playground, pleasure-ground, and garden-ground of such manifold interest and beauty.

SKETCH MAP OF SURREY

SURREY is but a small county, the latitudes or longitudes of which a good walker could traverse in a day; but perhaps no other in England can be found so close packed with scenes of manifold beauty. Among the Home Counties, at least, it seems best to answer Mr. P. G. Hamertons criterion of a perfect country as one which, in a days drive, or half a days, gives you an entirely new horizon, so that you may feel in a different region, and have all the refreshment of a total change of scene within a few miles of your own house. Its over-the-way neighbour Middlesex, which Cobbett, in his slap-dash style, puts down as all ugly, is at least comparatively tame and monotonous; and one must go as far as Derby or Devon for such boldly accidented heights as those from which Surrey looks over the growth of London.

The countys varied features run from north to south in zones a few miles broad, whose characteristic beauties not seldom dovetail into each other with fine effect of contrast. The north border of this south land is the winding Thames, its rich banks rising to wooded eminences like St. Anns Hill and St. Georges Hill, the swell of Richmond Park, the Ridgeway of Wimbledon, and those suburban eminences from which the Crystal Palace shines over Kent. The east side of this zone is masked by the spread of Greater London, rich and poor; and the west side, too, becomes more thickly dotted with villages and villas; while to the south that giant octopus goes on stretching its grimy tentacles over the green fields turned into eligible building sites. How far its process of urbanification will reach, seems to depend on the stability of Britains commercial greatness, which again depends, we are told, on the Fiscal question, if not on circumstances quite beyond our control, such as the stock still on hand in the national coal-cellar. When that New Zealand tourist comes to sketch the ruins of St. Pauls, will he find Southwark, like ancient Croton, fallen to a squalid fever-stricken townlet, or an American syndicate at work digging up the ruins of Kingston, as Nippur is now excavated after being forgotten for thousands of years? Babylon is become heaps, Nineveh a dwelling-place for dragons. What prophet, then, shall assure us that in a yet unbuilt Australian capital, or at some future transatlantic hub of the universe, fragments of jerry-builders brick and specimens of electroplated ware from Tooting or Woking may not come to be exhibited, even as our museums treasure Roman tiles and coins dug up in the fields of Surrey! There are scientific Cassandras who hint how no insurance office can guarantee that all these millions of smug citizens might not any night be roused to homeless terror by the shock of an earthquake, like that which ruined San Francisco.

Meanwhile the greatest city of the world thrives and goes on growing, so that almost all of Surrey which it does not already cover may be counted as its home-farm or pleasure-grounds. This generation is hardly moved to exclaim, as a writer of last century did on Denmark Hill: The rich carpet of Nature decked with Floras choicest flowers, and wafting perfumes of odoriferous herbs floating on the breezes, expanded and made my heart replete with joy! William Black, indeed, found beauty at the doors of Camberwell; and the heights of Norwood deserve a better fate than to be covered with villas. But this mass of bold contours is exceptional so near South London. More often we must be content to get over a green rim of our scenic nosegay. From the undulating streets and suburban rows we usually pass on to a plain, presenting market-gardens and dairy-farms, where the open ground is not required for playing fields. Private groves and hedgerows make a show of timber; and when branches are bare, a frequent feature of the scenery will be those goal-posts which a critically observing foreigner has mistaken for gallows. Here we are in the first zone of Surrey, a stretch of London clay and brick earth, broken here and there by patches of gravel and sand, which, when large enough, are like to be marked out by the hungry game of golf.