ched its wiry sprays against the light. The villages were
pretty enough, with their quaint, irregular white cottages, comfortably
thatched, among the little orchards and gardens; and in every village
the ancient, beautiful church, each with a character of its own and a
special feature of interest or beauty, lay nestled in trees, or held up
its grey tower over ricks and barns. We are apt to forget what
beautiful things these churches are, because they are so common, so
familiar; if there were but a few of them, we should make careful
pilgrimages to see them, but now we hardly turn off the road to visit
them.

I often wonder what exactly the feeling and the spirit were that
produced them, what the demand precisely was that created the supply. I
suppose they were almost always the gift of some wealthy person; of
course labour and perhaps materials were cheaper, but there must have
been a much larger proportion of people employed in the trade of
building than is the case nowadays; probably these churches were slowly
and leisurely built, in the absence of modern mechanical facilities. It
is difficult to conceive how the thing was carried out at all in places
with so few resources--how the stone was conveyed thither over the
infamous miry roads, how the carving was done, how the builders were
lodged and fed. One would like, too, to know exactly what part the
churches played in the social life of the place. Some people would have
us believe that the country people of that date had a simple enjoyment
of beauty and artistic instincts which caused them to take a pleasure,
which they do not now feel, in these beautiful little sanctuaries. I do
not know what the evidence is for that. I find it very hard to believe
that our agricultural labourers have gone backwards in this respect; I
should imagine it was rather the other way. My impression is that
education has probably increased the power of perception and
appreciation rather than diminished it. It is possible that the absence
of excitement, of diffuse reading, of communication in those days may
have tended to concentrate the affections and interests of agricultural
people more on their immediate surroundings, but I rather doubt it; the
problem is, considering the much greater roughness and coarseness of
village life in the Middle Ages, how there could have existed a
poetical and artistic instinct among villagers, which they have now
forfeited.

These churches certainly indicat