England & Scotland

A picturesque tour of the River Thames

Murray's elegiac tone for lost landmarks of English culture is one aspect of the picturesque ethos. The volume as a whole reveals the former significance of the river as a means of transport around London. Like his previous book, The World of London, this work is intended for a local audience interested in its own history and sights.
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Cannongate

This image of Canongate during a royal procession highlights Edinburgh's loyalty to the monarch as well as its impressive modernity. Scotland was no longer the potentially rebellious or poverty-stricken northern neighbour of earlier accounts.

This particular publication led its publisher, Virtue, to claim 'that the prosperity he had attained was mainly owing to Dr. Beattie's literary assistance'. Beattie and Bartlett put out similar volumes on Switzerland, the castles and abbeys of England, and the Danube, though the Scottish volume was the greatest success.
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Scottish tourist

The strip maps shown here emphasise the sense of a journey with a clear destination, not to be delayed by potential distractions off the route. The precise milage chart also exemplifies the highly organised nature of this sort of travel. We are not yet quite to the stage of the package tour, but the reader of this ninth edition certainly did not expect surprises along the way.
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