standing
throughout this wide district, "to point a moral of adorn a tale," that
we must look for traces of the exquisite workmanship of English hands in
bygone days, "the only witnesses, perhaps, that remain to us of the
faith and fear of nations. All else for which the builders sacrificed
has passed away--all their living interests and aims and achievements.
We know not for what they laboured, and we see no evidence of their
reward. Victory, wealth, authority, happiness--all have departed, though
bought by many a bitter sacrifice. But of them, and their life, and
their toil upon earth, one reward, one evidence is left to us in those
grey heaps of deep-wrought stone. They have taken with them to the grave
their powers, their honours, and their errors; but they have left us
their adoration." [2]

[Footnote 2: Ruskin, "Seven Lamps of Architecture."]

Too many of our modern buildings are a sham from beginning to end--sham
marble, sham stonework, sham wallpapers, sham wainscoting, sham carpets
on the ground, and sham people walking about on them: even the very
bookcases are sham. In these old Cotswold houses we have the reverse.
The stonework is real, and the material is the best of its kind--good,
honest, native stone. The oak wainscoting is real, though patched with
deal and painted white in recent times. The same pains in the carving
are apparent in those parts of the house which are never seen except by
the servants, as in the important rooms. And so it is with all the work
of three, four, and five hundred years ago. The builders may have had
their faults, their prejudices, and their ignorances,--their very
simplicity may have been the means of saving them from error,--but they
were at all events truthful and genuine.

In many villages throughout the Cotswolds are to be seen ancient
wayside crosses of exquisite workmanship and design. These were for the
most part erected in the fourteenth century. One of the best specimens
of the kind stands in the market-place of old Malmesbury, hard by the
ancient monastery there. The date of this cross is A.D. 1480. Leland
remarks upon it as follows: "There is a right faire and costely peace of
worke for poor market folks to stand dry when rayne cummeth; the men of
the towne made this peace of worke in _hominum memoria_." Malmesbury, by
the bye, is just outside the Cotswold district.

At Calmsden--a tiny isolated hamlet near North Cerney--is a grey and
weather-beaten wayside cro