A Cotswold Village | Page 9

lofty strains.
"The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, Await alike the inevitable hour The paths of glory lead but to the grave."
Among other old masters was a portrait of the "John Coxwel" who built the house, by Cornelius Jansen, dated 1613. The house did not appear remarkable either for size or grandeur; yet there is always something particularly pleasing to me to alight unexpectedly on buildings of this kind, and to find that although they are obscure and unknown, they are on a small scale as interesting to the antiquarian as Knole, Hatfield, and other more famous mediaeval houses. Some lattice windows, evidently at some time out of doors, but now on the inner walls, showed that in more recent times the house had been enlarged, and the old courtyard walled in and made part of the hall. Over one of these windows is the inscription, "Post tenebras lux." The part I liked best, however, was the old-fashioned passage, with its lattice windows and musty dungeon savour, leading to the ancient kitchen and to a little oak-panelled sitting-room: but, knocking my head severely against the oak beam in the doorway, I nearly brought the whole ceiling down, a catastrophe which they tell me has happened before now in this rather rickety old manor house. Opening a door on the other side of the house, I passed out into the garden. How characteristic of the place!--a broad terrace running along the whole length of the house, and beyond that a few flower beds with the old sundial in their midst Beyond these a lawn, and then grass sweeping down to the edge of the river, some hundred yards away. Beyond the river again more grass, but of a wilder description, where the rabbits are scudding about or listening with pricked ears; and in the background a magnificent hanging wood, crowning the side of the valley, with a large rookery in it. I was much struck with the different tints of the foliage; for although autumn had not yet begun to turn the leaves, the different shades of green were most striking. A gigantic ash tree on the far side of the river stood out in bold relief, its lighter leaves being in striking contrast to the dark firs in the background. Then walnut and hazel, beech and chestnut all offered infinite variety of shape and foliage. The river here had been broadened to a width of some ninety feet, and an island had been made. The place seemed to be a veritable sportsman's paradise! Dearly would Isaac Walton have loved to dwell here! From the windows of the old house he would have loved to listen to the splash of the trout, the cawing of the rooks, and the quack of the waterfowl, while all the air is filled with the cooing of doves and the songs of birds. At night he could have heard the murmuring waterfall amid a stillness only broken at intervals by the scream of the owl, the clatter of the goatsucker, or the weird barking of the foxes: for not two hundred yards from the house and practically in the garden, is a fox earth that has never been without a litter of, cubs for forty years!
In an ivy-covered house in the stable-yard I saw a very large number of foxes' noses nailed to boards of wood--as Sir Roger de Coverley used to nail them. They appeared to have been slain by one Dick Turpin, huntsman to the Vale of White Horse hounds, some thirty or forty years ago, when a quondam master of those hounds lived in this old place.
What a charm there is in an old-fashioned English garden! The great tall hollyhocks and phlox, the bright orange marigolds and large purple poppies. The beds and borders crammed with cloves and many-coloured asters, the sweet blue of the cornflower, and the little lobelias. Zinneas, too, of all colours; dahlias, tall stalks of anenome japonica, and such tangled masses of stocks! As I walked down by the old garden wall, whereon lots of roses hung their dainty heads, I thought I had never seen grass so green and fresh looking, except in certain parts of Ireland.
But the wild flowers by the silent river pleased me best of all. Such a medley of graceful, fragrant meadow-sweet, and tall, rough-leaved willow-herbs with their lovely pink flowers. Light blue scorpion-grasses and forget-me-nots were there too, not only among the sword-flags and the tall fescue-grasses by the bank, but little islands of them dotted about a over the brook. Thyme-scented water-mint, with lilac-tinted spikes and downy stalks, was almost lost amongst the taller wild flowers and the "segs" that fringed the brook-side.
There are no flowers like the wild ones; they