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XI
KELMSCOTT AND WILLIAM MORRIS
I had been at Fairford that still, fresh, April morning, and had
enjoyed the sunny little piazza, with its pretty characteristic
varieties of pleasant stone-built houses, solid Georgian fronts
interspersed with mullioned gables. But the church! That is a
marvellous place; its massive lantern-tower, with solid, softly-
moulded outlines--for the sandy oolite admits little fineness of
detail--all weathered to a beautiful orange-grey tint, has a mild
dignity of its own. Inside it is a treasure of mediaevalism. The
screens, the woodwork, the monuments, all rich, dignified, and
spacious. And the glass! Next to King's College Chapel, I suppose,
it is the noblest series of windows in England, and the colour of
it is incomparable. Azure and crimson, green and orange, yet all
with a firm economy of effect, the robes of the saints set and
imbedded in a fine intricacy of white tabernacle-work. As to the
design, I hardly knew whether to smile or weep. The splendid, ugly
faces of the saints, depicted, whether designedly or artlessly I
cannot guess, as men of simple passions and homely experience,
moved me greatly, so unlike the mild, polite, porcelain visages of
even the best modern glass.
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