wish; lately, however, the colouring has been lavished on them with no
sparing hand. These "photo-chromes" are unnatural and impossible,
whereas the old permanent photographs were very beautiful.

At Kemble, with its old manor house and stone-roofed cottages, we say
good-bye to the Vale of White Horse; for we have entered the Cotswolds.
Stretching from Broadway to Bath, and from Birdlip to Burford, and
containing about three hundred square miles, is a vast tract of hill
country, intersected by numerous narrow valleys. Probably at one period
this district was a rough, uncultivated moor. It is now cultivated for
the most part, and grows excellent barley. The highest point of this
extensive range is eleven hundred and thirty-four feet, but the average
altitude would not exceed half that height. Almost every valley has its
little brook. The district is essentially a "stone country;" for all the
houses and most of their roofs are built of the local limestone, which
lies everywhere on these hills within a few inches of the surface. There
is no difficulty in obtaining plenty of stone hereabouts. The chief
characteristics of the buildings are their antiquity and Gothic
quaintness. The air is sharp and bracing, and the climate, as is
inevitable on the shallow, porous soil of the oolite hills, wonderfully
dry and invigorating. "Lands of gold have been found, 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