stroyer has laid his
hand. The site is so valuable; the modern world of business presses
out the life of these fine old edifices. They have to make way for
new-fangled erections built in the modern French style with sprawling
gigantic figures with bare limbs hanging on the porticoes which seem
to wonder how they ever got there, and however they were to keep
themselves from falling. London is hopeless! We can but delve its soil
when opportunities occur in order to find traces of Roman or medieval
life. Churches, inns, halls, mansions, palaces, exchanges have
vanished, or are quickly vanishing, and we cast off the dust of London
streets from our feet and seek more hopeful places.

[Illustration: Old Shop, formerly standing in Cliffe High Street,
Lewes]

But even in the sleepy hollows of old England the pulse beats faster
than of yore, and we shall only just be in time to rescue from
oblivion and the house-breaker some of our heritage. Old city walls
that have defied the attacks of time and of Cromwell's Ironsides are
often in danger from the wiseacres who preside on borough
corporations. Town halls picturesque and beautiful in their old age
have to make way for the creations of the local architect. Old shops
have to be pulled down in order to provide a site for a universal
emporium or a motor garage. Nor are buildings the only things that are
passing away. The extensive use of motor-cars and highway vandalism
are destroying the peculiar beauty of the English roadside. The
swift-speeding cars create clouds of white dust which settles upon the
hedges and trees, covering them with it and obscuring the wayside
flowers and hiding all their attractiveness. Corn and grass are
injured and destroyed by the dust clouds. The charm and poetry of the
country walk are destroyed by motoring demons, and the wayside
cottage-gardens, once the most attractive feature of the English
landscape, are ruined. The elder England, too, is vanishing in the
modes, habits, and manners of her people. Never was the truth of the
old oft-quoted Latin proverb--_Tempora mutantur, et nos mutamur in
illis_--so pathetically emphatic as it is to-day. The people are
changing in their habits and modes of thought. They no longer take
pleasure in the simple joys of their forefathers. Hence in our
chronicle of Vanishing England we shall have to refer to some of those
strange customs which date back to primeval ages, but which the
railways, excursion trains, and t