The Two Guardians | Page 3

Church set to rights
now, when papa is well enough to attend to it."
"It is high time, certainly," said Edmund; "our Church is almost a

disgrace to us, especially with the Arundel aisle, to show what our
ancestors did."
"No, not quite to us," said Marian; "you know papa would have done it
all long ago, if the idea had not vexed poor old Mr. May so much. But
Ranger! Ranger! where is Ranger, Edmund?"
Edmund whistled, and presently, with whirring, rushing wing, there
flew over the hedge beside them a covey of partridges, followed by
Ranger's eager bark. Marian's pony started, danced, and capered;
Edmund watched her with considerable anxiety, but she reined it in
with a steady, dexterous, though not a strong hand, kept her seat well,
and rode on in triumph, while Edmund exclaimed, "Capital, Marian!"
Then looking back, "What a shot that was!" he added in a sort of
parenthesis, continuing, "I am proud, Mayflower is not a bit too much
for you now, though I think we must have given her up if you had had
another tumble."
"Oh, no, no, I do so delight in Mayflower, pretty creature!" said Marian,
patting her neck. "I like to feel that the creature I ride is alive--not an
old slug, like that animal which you are upon, Edmund."
"That is decidedly ungrateful of you, Marian, when you learnt to ride
upon this identical slug, and owe the safety of your neck to its quiet
propensities. Now take care down this stony hill; hold her up well--that
is right."
Care was certainly needed as they descended the steep hill side; the
road, or rather pathway, cut out between high, steep, limestone rocks,
and here and there even bare of earth. Any one but a native would have
trembled at such a descent but though the cousins paid attention to their
progress, they had no doubts or alarms. At the bottom a clear sparkling
stream traversed the road, where, for the convenience of foot
passengers, a huge flat stone had been thrown across from one high
bank to the other, so as to form a romantic bridge. Marian, however,
did not avail herself of it, but rode gallantly through the shallow water,
only looking back at it to observe to Edmund, "We must make a sketch
of that some day or other."

"I am afraid we cannot get far enough off," said Edmund, "to make a
good drawing of it. Too many things go to the making of the
picturesque."
"Yes, I know, but that is what I never can understand. I see by woeful
experience that what is pretty in itself will not make a pretty drawing,
and everyone says so; but I never could find out why."
"Perhaps because we cannot represent it adequately."
"Yes, but there is another puzzle; you sometimes see an exact
representation, which is not really a picture at all. Don't you know that
thing that the man who came to the door did of our house,--the trees all
green, and the sky all blue, and the moors all purple?"
"As like as it can stare; yes, I know."
"Well, why does that not satisfy us? why is it not a picture?"
"Because it stares, I suppose. Why does not that picture of my aunt at
Mrs. Week's cottage satisfy you as well as the chalk sketch in the
dining-room?"
"Because it has none of herself--her spirit."
"Well, I should say that nature has a self and a spirit which must be
caught, or else the Chinese would be the greatest artists on the face of
the earth."
"Yes, but why does an archway, or two trees standing up so as to
enclose the landscape, or--or any of those things that do to put in the
foreground, why do they enable you to make a picture, to catch this self
and spirit."
"Make the phial to enclose the genie," said Edmund. "Abstruse
questions, Marian; but perhaps it is because they contract the space, so
as to bring it more to the level of our capacity, make it less grand, and
more what we can get into keeping. To be sure, he would be a

presumptuous man who tried to make an exact likeness of that," he
added, as they reached the top of the hill, and found themselves on an
open common, with here and there a mass of rock peeping up, but for
the most part covered with purple heath and short furze, through which
Ranger coursed, barking joyously. The view was splendid, on one side
the moors rising one behind the other, till they faded in grey distance,
each crowned with a fantastic pile of rocks, one in the form of a castle,
another of a cathedral, another of a huge crouching lion,