of three, four, and five hundred years ago. The builders may have had
their faults, their prejudices, and their ignorances,--their very
simplicity may have been the means of saving them from error,--but they
were at all events truthful and genuine.

In many villages throughout the Cotswolds are to be seen ancient
wayside crosses of exquisite workmanship and design. These were for the
most part erected in the fourteenth century. One of the best specimens
of the kind stands in the market-place of old Malmesbury, hard by the
ancient monastery there. The date of this cross is A.D. 1480. Leland
remarks upon it as follows: "There is a right faire and costely peace of
worke for poor market folks to stand dry when rayne cummeth; the men of
the towne made this peace of worke in _hominum memoriâ_." Malmesbury, by
the bye, is just outside the Cotswold district.

At Calmsden--a tiny isolated hamlet near North Cerney--is a grey and
weather-beaten wayside cross of beautiful Gothic workmanship, erected
(men say) by the Knights Templar of Quenington; and there are ancient
crosses or remnants of them at Cirencester, Eastleach, Harnhill,
Rendcombe, Stow-on-the-Wold, and many other places in the district. But
few of these old village crosses still stand intact in their pristine
beauty. May they never suffer the terrible fate of a very beautiful one
which was erected in the fourteenth century at Bristol! Pope, writing a
century and a half ago, describes it as "a very fine old cross of Gothic
curious work, but spoiled with the folly of _new gilding it_, that takes
away all the venerable antiquity."

Happily there is no likelihood of the ancient crosses in the Cotswolds
being decorated by a coating of gold. The precious metal is all too
scarce there, even if the good taste of the country folk did not