r to which I committed myself in
faith, we reached a little platform on the very top of one of the
pinnacles. The vane had just been fixed, and the stone was splashed
with the oozing solder. And now came the delight of the huge view all
round: the wooden heights, the rolling hills; old church towers rose
from flowering orchards; a mansion peeped through immemorial trees; and
far to the north-east we could see the white cliff of _Pegwell Bay_;
endeared to me through the beautiful picture by Dyce, where the pale
crags rise from the reefs green with untorn weeds. There on the
horizon I could see shadowy sails on the steely sea-line.

Near at hand there were the streets, and then the Close, with its
comfortable canonical houses, in green trim gardens, spread out like a
map at my feet. We looked down on to the tops of tall elm-trees, and
saw the rooks walking and sitting on the grey-splashed platforms of
twigs, that swayed horribly in the breeze. It was pleasant to see, as
I did, the tiny figure of my reverend host walking, a dot of black, in
his garden beneath, reading in a book. The long grey-leaded roof ran
broad and straight, a hundred feet below. One felt for a moment as a
God might feel, looking on a corner of his created world, and seeing
that it was good. One seemed to have surmounted the earth, and to
watch the little creeping orbits of men with a benevolent compassion,
perceiving how strait they were. The large air hissed briskly in the
pinnacles, and roared through the belfry windows beneath. I cannot
describe the eager exhilaration which filled me; but I guessed that the
impulse which bids men fling themselves from such heights is not a
morbid prepossession, not a physical dizziness, but an intemperate and
overwhelming joy. It seems at such a moment so easy to float and swim
through the viewless air, as if one would be borne up on the wings of
angels.

But, alas! the hour warned us to return. On our way down we disturbed
a peevish jackdaw from her nest; she had dragged up to that intolerable
height a pile of boughs that would have made a dozen nests; she had
interwoven for the cup to hold her eggs a number of strips of purloined
canvas. There lay the three speckled eggs, the hope of the race, while
the chiding mother stood on a pinnacle hard by, waiting for the
intruder to begone.

A strange sense of humiliation and smallness came upon me as we emerged
at last into the nave; the people that had se