The volume we have just laid down painfully reminds us that the poet
and the historian have no such heritage in this land. We have done our
best to crowd out all the beautiful significant names we found here,
and to replace them by meaningless appellations. For the name of a
thing is that which really has in it something of that to which it
belongs, which describes and classifies it, and is its spoken
representative; while the appellation is only a title conferred by act
of Parliament or her Majesty's good pleasure: it cannot make a parvenu
into a peer.
But we are not writing for the mere interest of the poet and the
novelist. Fit names are not given, but grow; and we believe there is
not a spot in the land, possessing any attractiveness, but has its name
ready fitted to it, waiting unsyllabled in the air above it for the
right sponsor to speak it into life. We plead for public convenience
simply. We are thinking not of the ears of taste, but of the brain of
business. We do not wonder at the monstrous accumulations of the
Dead-Letter Office, when we see the actual poverty which our system of
naming places has brought about. Pardon us a few statistics, and, as
you read them, remember, dear reader, that this is the story of ten
years ago, and that the enormous growths of the last decade have
probably increased the evil prodigiously.
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