The Quarterly Review

Cæsars, let him start by learning who was his own grandfather. The Church Catechism rightly commences by making the child tell his own name; it would be in many cases a most puzzling, but in all cases and senses a most proper question, to ask him further the names of his godfathers and godmothers; and so carrying him gradually onward, he would know, what seldom happens, the kings of England, before he attempts those of Israel and Judah. This principle holds as true of place as of persons. The things that touch us nearest interest us most. Geography should begin from the school-walls. Which side of this room does the sun rise on?'-' Does Church-lane run west or north?'-Whither does the brook flow that rises on Squash-hill?' In this way the young scholar would in time be brought to comprehend the round world and his own position on it; and probably with some clearer Vol. 101.-No. 201. perception

perception of the truth and relation of things than if he had begun by rote 'The earth is a terraqueous globe, depressed at the poles, consisting of,' &c. &c.

But we are all taught on the contrary plan. We begin at the wrong end, for, in the ladder of learning, Ego, not Adam, is the true No. 1. We start from the Equator instead of Highstreet, and the result is the lamentable fact, that even educated men are strangers in their own country, and thousands die within the sound of Bow-bells who have never seen the inside of St. Paul's. Topography then should precede geography. Yet perhaps there is not a schoolroom in England where a county map is to be found hung up on the wall. Frightened by the remembrance of having been once the deluded subscriber to a Topographical Dictionary, even students have a horror of the word, and the subject is consigned, in expensive folios, to a few professed antiquaries, or to some eccentric member of a county family, who emerges every third or fourth generation to preserve a provincial dignity which he would not willingly let die. In its perfect form indeed, which implies unabridged documents, large illustrations, and lengthy pedigrees, a County History must ever keep aloof from the novi libri, the ride-and-read ephemerals of the railway book-stall, and stoutly stand up for the privileged form and bulk of its order-the last of the biblical barons; but considering how much valuable topographical lore of continental Europe an English traveller carries condensed in the red-covers of Albemarle-street, he may reasonably look forward to be furnished ere long with some equally accurate and handy guide-books to his native land. Welcoming then the commencement, and awaiting the continuation of Mr. Murray's Handbooks for the English counties, we will meanwhile pass in review some of the more substantial materials that exist for a popular history of Northamptonshire, a county by no means generally considered rich in salient points of interest.

Northamptonshire, however, has the advantage of affording a good illustration of the natural progress and development of County History. Before Baker's volumes, there already existed the earlier works of Morton and Bridges. Norden's History, written in 1610, published in 1720, is little more than an index to the principal manors. John Morton, rector of Oxendon, published his Natural History of Northamptonshire' in 1712, following, as he himself professes, the judicious Dr. Plot, the pioneer, in Oxfordshire and Staffordshire, in this branch of literature. In the minute notices of physical phenomena by the writers of this school may be traced the first-fruits of Bacon's exhortation to the exacter record of all such facts: The history

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The Quarterly Review, Volume 101