A Cotswold Village | Page 7

and lands of spices and
precious merchandise; but this is the land of health" Thus wrote
Richard Jefferies of the downs, and thus say we of the Cotswolds.
And now our Great Western express is gliding into Cirencester, the
ancient capital of the Cotswold country. How fair the old place seems
after the dirt and smoke of London! Here town and country are blended
into one, and everything is clean and fresh and picturesque. The garish
church, as you view it from the top of the market-place, has a charm
unsurpassed by any other sacred building in the land. In what that

charm lies I have often wondered. Is it the marvellous symmetry of the
whole graceful pile, as the eye, glancing down the massive square
tower and along the pierced battlements and elaborate pinnacles, finally
rests on the empty niches and traceried oriel windows of the
magnificent south porch? I cannot say in what the charm exactly
consists, but this stately Gothic fane has a grandeur as impressive as it
is unexpected, recalling those wondrous words of Ruskin's:
"I used to feel as much awe in gazing at the buildings as on the hills,
and could believe that God had done a greater work in breathing into
the narrowness of dust the mighty spirits by whom its haughty walls
had been raised and its burning legends written, than in lifting the rock
of granite higher than the clouds of heaven, and veiling them with their
various mantle of purple flower and shadowy pine."
[Illustration: The Old Manor House. 029.png]
CHAPTER II.
A COTSWOLD VILLAGE.
The village is not a hundred miles from London, yet "far from the
madding crowd's ignoble strife." A green, well-wooded valley, in the
midst of those far-stretching, cold-looking Cotswold Hills, it is like an
oasis in the desert.
Up above on the wolds all is bleak, dull, and uninteresting. The air up
there is ever chill; walls of loose stone divide field from field, and few
houses are to be seen. But down in the valley all is fertile and full of
life. It is here that the old-fashioned villagers dwell. How well I
remember the first time I came upon it! One fine September evening,
having left all traces of railways and the ancient Roman town of
Cirencester some seven long miles behind me, with wearied limbs I
sought this quiet, sequestered spot. Suddenly, as I was wondering how
amid these never ending hills there could be such a place as I had been
told existed, I beheld it at my feet, surpassing beautiful! Below me was
a small village, nestling amid a wealth of stately trees. The hand of man
seemed in some bygone time to have done all that was necessary to

render the place habitable, but no more. There were cottages, bridges,
and farm buildings, but all were ivy clad and time worn. The very trees
themselves appeared to be laden with a mantle of ivy that was more
than they could bear. Many a tall fir, from base to topmost twig, was
completely robed with the smooth, five-pointed leaves of this rapacious
evergreen. Through the thick foliage, of elm and ash and beech, I could
just see an old manor house, and round about it, as if for protection,
were clustered some thirty cottages. A murmuring of waters filled my
ears, and on descending the hill I came upon a silvery trout stream,
which winds its way down the valley, broad and shallow, now gently
gliding over smooth gravel, now dashing over moss-grown stones and
rock. The cottages, like the manor house and farm buildings, are all
built of the native stone, and all are gabled and picturesque. Indeed,
save a few new cottages, most of the dwellings appeared to be two or
three hundred years old. One farmhouse I noted carefully, and I longed
to tear away the ivy from the old and crumbling porch, to see if I could
not discern some half-effaced inscription telling me the date of this
relic of the days of "Merrie England."
This quaint old place appeared older than the rest of the buildings. On
enquiry, I learnt that long, long ago, before the present manor house
existed, this was the abode of the old squires of the place; but for the
last hundred years it had been the home of the principal tenant and his
ancestors--yeomen farmers of the old-fashioned school, with some six
hundred acres of land. The present occupants appeared to be an old
man of some seventy years of age and his three sons. Keen sportsmen
these, who dearly love to walk for hours in pursuit of game in the
autumn, on the chance of bagging an occasional brace of partridges or a
wild pheasant (for everything here is wild), or,