At the little church there across the
meadows the portly, tender-hearted, generous Charles James Fox had
wedded his bride. Here, in the pool below, Cowper's dog had dragged
out for him the yellow water-lily that he could not reach; and in
the church itself was a little slab where two tiny maidens sleep,
the sisters of the famous Miss Gunnings, who set all hearts ablaze
by their beauty, who married dukes and earls, and had spent their
sweet youth in a little ruined manor-house hard by. I wonder
whether after all the two little girls, who died in the time of
roses, had not the better part; and whether the great Duchess, who
showed herself so haughty to poor Boswell, when he led his great
dancing Bear through the grim North, did not think sometimes in her
state of the childish sisters with whom she had played, before they
came to be laid in the cool chancel beside the slow stream.
And then we sate down for a little on the churchyard wall, and
watched the water-grasses trail and the fish poise. In that sweet
corner of the churchyard, at a certain season of the year, grow
white violets; they had dropped their blooms long ago; but they
were just as much alive as when they were speaking aloud to the
world with scent and colour; I can never think of flowers and trees
as not in a sense conscious; I believe all life to be conscious of
itself, and I am sure that the flowering time is the happy time for
flowers as much as it is for artists.
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