uty; the only
principle ought to be to spare everything that is of careful and solid
workmanship, to give it a chance, to let time and age have their
perfect work. It is the utter conventionality of the whole thing that
is so distressing; the same thing is going on all over the country, the
attempt to put back the clock, and to try and restore things as they
were; history, tradition, association, are not considered. The old
builders were equally ruthless, it is true; they would sweep away a
Norman choir to build a Decorated one; but at all events they were
advancing and expanding, not feebly recurring to a past period of
taste, and trying to obliterate the progress of the centuries.

About noon I left the little town, and struck out up a winding lane to
the hills. The copses were full of anemones and primroses; birds sang
sharply in the bushes which were gemmed with fresh green; now and then
I heard the woodpecker laugh as if at some secret jest among the
thickets. Presently the little town was at my feet, looking small and
tranquil in the golden noon; and soon I came to the top. It was grassy,
open down-land up here, and in an instant the wide view of a rich
wooded and watered plain spread before me, with shadowy hills on the
horizon. In the middle distance I saw the red roofs of a great town,
the smoke going peacefully up; here was a shining river-reach, like a
crescent of silver. It was England indeed--tranquil, healthy,
prosperous England.

The rest of the day I need not record. It was full of delicate
impressions--an old, gabled, mullioned house among its pastures; a
hamlet by a stream, admirably grouped; a dingle set with primroses; and
over all, the long, pure lines of upland, with here and there, through
a gap, the purple, wealthy plain.

I write this in the evening, at a little wayside inn, in a hamlet under
the hill. The name alone, Wenge Grandmain, is worth a shilling. It is
very simple, but clean, and the people are kind; not with the
professional manner of those who bow, smiling, to a paying guest, but
of those who welcome a wanderer and try to make him a home. And so, in
a dark-panelled little parlour, with a sedate-ticking clock, I sit
while the sounds of life grow fainter and rarer in the little street.

THE CROSSFOXES INN,
BOURTON-ON-THE-WOLD,
April 16, 1904.

DEAR HERBERT,--I have now been ten days on my travels, but for the last
week I have pitched my moving tent at Bourton. Do you