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