real light and colour and preciousness of architecture; and it is not
until a building has assumed this character, till it has been entrusted
with the fame and hallowed by the deeds of men, till its walls have been
witnesses of suffering and its pillars rise out of the shadow of death,
that its existence, more lasting as it is than that of the natural
objects of the world around it, can be gifted with even so much as these
possess of language and of life."

If we would seek a lesson in sacrifice from the men who lived and
laboured here in the remote past, we can learn many a one from those
deep walls of native stone, and that laborious workmanship which was the
chief characteristic of the toil of our simple ancestors. "All old work,
nearly, has been hard work; it may be the hard work of children, of
barbarians, of rustics, but it is always their utmost." They may have
been ignorant of the sanitary laws which govern health, and ill advised
in some of the sites they chose, but they grudged neither hand labour
nor sweat of brow; they spent the best years of their lives in the
erection of the temples where we still worship and the manor houses we
still inhabit.

It is not claimed that there is much _ornamental_ architecture to be
found in these Cotswold buildings; it is something in these days if we
can boast that there is nothing to offend the eye in a district which is
less than a hundred miles from London. There is no other district of
equal extent within the same radius of which as much could be said.

"Jam pauca aratro jugera regiae
Moles relinquent."

But here all the houses are picturesque, great and small alike. And