inted him. Beyond the stile, across the level velvet of a meadow, a
footpath lay, like a thread of darker woof. We followed it from field
to field and from stile to stile. It was the way to church. At the
church we finally arrived, lost in its rook-haunted churchyard, hidden
from the work-day world by the broad stillness of pastures--a gray,
gray tower, a huge black yew, a cluster of village graves, with
crooked headstones, in grassy, low relief. The whole scene was deeply
ecclesiastical. My companion was overcome.

"You must bury me here," he cried. "It's the first church I have seen
in my life. How it makes a Sunday where it stands!"

The next day we saw a church of statelier proportions. We walked over
to Worcester, through such a mist of local color that I felt like one
of Smollett's pedestrian heroes, faring tavern-ward for a night of
adventures. As we neared the provincial city we saw the steepled mass
of the cathedral, long and high, rise far into the cloud-freckled
blue. And as we came nearer still, we stopt on the bridge and viewed
the solid minster reflected in the yellow Severn. And going farther
yet we entered the town--where surely Miss Austen's heroines, in
chariots and curricles, must often have come a-shopping for
swan's-down boas and high lace mittens; we lounged about the gentle
close and gazed insatiably at that most soul-soothing sight, the
waning, wasting afternoon light, the visible ether which feels the
voices of the chimes, far aloft on the broad perpendicular field of
the cathedral tower; saw it linger and nestle and abide, as it loves
to do on all bold architectural spaces, converting them graciously
into registers and witnesses of nature; tasted, too, as deeply of the
peculiar stillness of this clerical precinct; saw a rosy English lad
come forth and lock the door of the old foundation school, which
marries its hoary basement to the soaring Gothic of the church, and
carry his big responsible key into one of the quiet canonical houses;
and then stood musing together on the effect on one's mind of having
in one's boyhood haunted such cathedral shades as a King's scholar,
and yet kept ruddy with much cricket in misty meadows by the Severn.
On the third morning we betook ourselves to Lockley Park, having
learned that the greater part of it was open to visitors, and that,
indeed, on application, the house was occasionally shown.

Within its broad enclosure many a declining spur of the great hills