f. Freeman, is known to most. The study of towns was
the life and soul of Mr. Green's historic labours. Eloquent and powerful
pictures of the great cities of the world fill the greater part of Mr.
Harrison's well-known volume, "The Meaning of History"; and the student
of universal history (a few of these, it may be hoped, are still left)
finds them very stimulating and helpful. The special note of Prof.
Geddes' method is that he does not limit himself to the greater cities,
but also, and perhaps by preference, deals with the smaller, and with
their physical environment; and, above all, that he attempts not merely
to observe closely and thoroughly, but to generalise as the result of
his observation. In biology, the study of any single organism, however
minute and accurate, could reveal no laws (i.e., no general facts) of
structure or function. As for instance, many forms of heart must be
examined before the laws governing blood-circulation could be revealed;
so here. Countless, indeed, are the forms of cities; even limiting our
field of observation to those that have grown up in the last century
they are numerous enough. Their differences and analogies would
doubtless repay analysis, always supposing that we are clear how far the
modern town, as contrasted with the mediaeval or Graeco-Roman city, can
usefully be treated as "an integrate." This raises large questions of
nation, of groups of nations, finally of Humanity, which cannot here be
touched.

Meantime, from the teacher's standpoint, there can be no question at
all, among those who look upon education as something more than a
commercial asset, as to the utility of looking on every old town, with
the neighbourhood around it, as a condensed record, here and there
perfect, elsewhere lamentably blotted, yet still a record, of the
history of our race. Historic memories survive in our villages far more
widely than is thought. The descendants of the man who found the body of
Rufus in the New Forest still live hard by. The builder whom the first
William set to build Corfe Castle was Stephen Mowlem; and the
Dorsetshire firm of Mowlem still pave London causeways. A poor woman in
a remote hamlet, untouched by tourist or guide-book, has shown me the
ash-tree under which Monmouth was seized after Sedgemoor; a Suffolk
peasant, equally innocent of book-knowledge, has pointed Out "Bloody
Mary's lane," through which that bugbear of Protestants passed three
hundred years before on h