on which the profane vulgar travel by their own right must be at a
distance. When some old Dale of Allington built his house, he thought
differently. There stood the church and there the village, and,
pleased with such vicinity, he sat himself down close to his God and
to his tenants.

As you pass along the road from Guestwick into the village you see
the church near to you on your left hand; but the house is hidden
from the road. As you approach the church, reaching the gate of it
which is not above two hundred yards from the high road, you see the
full front of the Great House. Perhaps the best view of it is from
the churchyard. The lane leading up to the church ends in a gate,
which is the entrance into Mr Dale's place. There is no lodge there,
and the gate generally stands open,--indeed, always does so, unless
some need of cattle grazing within requires that it should be closed.
But there is an inner gate, leading from the home paddock through
the gardens to the house, and another inner gate, some thirty yards
farther on, which will take you into the farmyard. Perhaps it is a
defect at Allington that the farmyard is very close to the house. But
the stables, and the straw-yards, and the unwashed carts, and the
lazy lingering cattle of the homestead, are screened off by a row of
chestnuts, which, when in its glory of flower, in the early days of
May, no other row in England can surpass in beauty. Had any one told
Dale of Allington,--this Dale or any former Dale,--that his place
wanted wood, he would have pointed with mingled pride and disdain to
his belt of chestnuts.

Of the church itself I will say the fewest possible number of
words. It was a church such as there are, I think, thousands in
England--low, incommodious, kept with difficulty in repair, too often