Swindon fifty years ago, more or less: reminiscences, notes, and relics of ye old Wiltshire towne

set down in writing, they would pass away from men's memory, and be for ever lost. Entering into a kind of mutual compact with my interviewers, I thought it possible I might find material for three or four other papers, and I thus very innocently entered upon a work-I admit it has been a most pleasant and agreeable one-which has resulted in the production of the present volume. Each new subject has suggested others, until the one paper has found some forty or fifty companions.

I need hardly add I have studiously avoided attempting anything like a formal history of the town. There is absolutely no material for such a purpose, and I could hardly have ventured to use it had it been forthcoming, for such an undertaking would have required more thoughtful research than I could have given it, whereas the papers as they now appear have afforded me week by week, as I wrote them for the columns of the Advertiser, a few hours of real enjoyment, which has been again and again heightened by the assurance that what I wrote was generally acceptable to a large body of readers, many of whom have been good enough to express a wish to see my weekly scraps and fancies placed between the two covers of a book.

For the purpose of helping on or illustrating any particular subject, I have not hesitated to avail myself of the labours of those who have dealt with cognate matters, always, however, admitting the source of the extract. The accounts of the Rioting in Wilts and adjoining counties by the agricultural labourers in 1830, and the trials of the prisoners, had previously appeared in newspapers and other publications, and more particularly in a series of letters in the Poole and Bournemouth Herald. Instead of attempting to go over the ground taken by the writers of the letters, and being anxious to bring some of the details of these terrible times before my readers in a permanent form, I have ven

tured to adopt the matter in one or two of the papers almost without alteration. The sketch of the Swindon Troop of Yeomanry Cavalry was compiled from the Orderly Book of the Troop, and therefore partakes more of the character of "veritable history" than some of the other papers can pretend to, and which are based principally on what I have myself seen and heard, or have gathered in conversation with those who have known the town and neighbourhood longer than I have.

My object throughout has been to preserve and amuse, rather than to lecture and instruct; and in this I trust it may be found I have not altogether failed.

What the changes of the next half, or even the next quarter, of a century may be the most ingenious must find it difficult to satisfy his own mind about, whilst to realise the changes of the past half century must be equally difficult, except to those who have passed the greater part at least of the period in active public life, and in direct contact with the people. In the all-important matter of the education of the people, in the enjoyment of political rights, in popular amusements, and social habits, not only of the poor, but of the well-to-do classes, the change has been as great as that from the darkness of mid-night to the brilliancy of mid-day. Were it possible for us to meet in promiscuous assembly our grandfathers and grandmothers, with their uncles and aunts, all the editions of "Who's Who" and "What's What" ever published would not suffice to explain. There may never again be a period in the whole range of English history between now and the time when the New Zealander takes his view of the ruined St. Paul's, in which, in so few years, the changes will be so marked as those which belong to the last fifty years, and that being so, anything which will serve to make these changes understandable cannot, I venture to think and hope, be otherwise than acceptable.

It will be noticed that I have occasionally travelled slightly outside the Swindon parish boundary. But I have done this principally for the purpose of illustration. I might have looked to some of the neighbouring parishes for altogether new, as well as supplementary, material, and I have felt some difficulty in restraining myself from doing this. Within the last twenty-five or thirty years it has occasionally fallen to my lot to write sketches of some of the neighbouring parishes-principally on the occasion of the restoration. of the parish church-for publication in my paper, and I have been urged by many kind friends to add these sketches to the present volume. This, however, I could not well do and keep it within reasonable compass. Should, however, the public favour accorded to this volume justify it, I shall be pleased to prepare a second or supplementary volume to the one for which I would now ask from those into whose hands it may fall a kindly consideration and a generous allowance for the circumstances under which it has been produced.

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