Besides
these there were a few works on local antiquities, a county-history
borrowed from the Master's library, in which Hammond appeared to have
been lately reading.
"They are delightful reading," observed Middleton, "these old
county-histories, with their great folio volumes and their minute account
of the affairs of families and the genealogies, and descents of estates,
bestowing as much blessed space on a few hundred acres as other
historians give to a principality. I fear that in my own country we shall
never have anything of this kind. Our space is so vast that we shall
never come to know and love it, inch by inch, as the English antiquarians
do the tracts of country with which they deal; and besides, our land is
always likely to lack the interest that belongs to English estates; for
where land changes its ownership every few years, it does not become
imbued with the personalities of the people who live on it. It is but so
much grass; so much dirt, where a succession of people have dwelt too
little to make it really their own. But I have found a pleasure that I
had no conception of before, in reading some of the English local
histories."
"It is not a usual course of reading for a transitory visitor," said
Hammond. "What could induce you to undertake it?"
"Simply the wish, so common and natural with Americans," said
Middleton--"the wish to find out something about my kindred--the local
origin of my own family.
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