An artificial type, one is
tempted to say!--and yet one ought never, I suppose, so to describe
any flower that has blossomed fragrantly upon the human stock; any
system that seems to extend a natural and instinctive appeal to
certain definite classes of human temperament.
I sped pleasantly enough along the low, rich pastures, thick with
hedgerow elms, to Lechlade, another pretty town with an infinite
variety of habitations. Here again is a fine ancient church with a
comely spire, "a pretty pyramis of stone," as the old Itinerary
says, overlooking a charming gabled house, among walled and
terraced gardens, with stone balls on the corner-posts and a
quaint pavilion, the river running below; and so on to a bridge
over the yet slender Thames, where the river water spouted clear
and fragrant into a wide pool; and across the flat meadows, bright
with kingcups, the spire of Lechlade towered over the clustered
house-roofs to the west.
Then further still by a lonely ill-laid road. And thus, with a mind
pleasantly attuned to beauty and a quickening pulse, I drew near to
Kelmscott.
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