Brighton to Inverness, on arriving at the latter town, send a telegram to a friend, saying, "We arrived at the end of Paradise this evening"? There is something very lovable about the English landscape; where grander scenes excite your admiration, it wins your affections, and will not let them go again, it nestles so near your heart. I have beheld the finest scenery the earth has to show, oftentimes with almost awe-struck admiration, but only the peace-bestowing English scenery have I ever felt to love! About two miles on our way, and a little to the right of our road, we observed Kyme's ancient tower uprising amidst surrounding foliage; this picturesque relic of past days gave a special interest and character to the prospect with its flavour of old-world romance. The solitary tower is all that remains of the once stately abode of the Kymes; it is now incorporated with a homely farmstead, and tells its own story of fallen fortunes. Driving on we soon reached a wide dyke, which we crossed on an ancient bridge; here a lonely wayside inn proclaimed itself on its sign with the comprehensive title of "The Angler's, Cyclist's, and Traveller's Rest." The dyke struck us, even on that bright sunshiny day, as being a dark and dreary stretch of water of a cheerless leaden hue, embanked and treeless. But the sullen waters of the dyke only acted as a foil to enhance the bright beauty of the sun-suffused landscape all around, as the shadow gives value to the light, and too much beauty is apt to cloy. A picture may be too pretty. Said an art THE USE OF UGLINESS! 259 critic once to Turner, "That's a fine painting of yours, but why have you got that ugly bit of building in the corner?" "Oh!" replied Turner, "that's to give value to the rest of the composition by way of contrast; I made it ugly on purpose!" and Turner was right. Who enjoys the country so much as the dweller in the unbeautiful smoke-stained streets of our huge modern towns? Shortly after this we reached the little village of Benington, which boasted a large church having a fine old tower, a tower, however, that ended abruptly without any architectural finish; presumably the ambition of the early builders was greater than their means. Nowadays we have improved upon the old ways-we build and complete without the means, then we set to work to beg for the money, though the begging is not always successful, as the following characteristic letter of Mr. Ruskin shows, which he wrote in reply to a circular asking him to subscribe to help to pay off some of the debt on a certain iron church :— BRANTWOOD, CONISTON, LANCASHIRE, 19th May 1886. My SIR-I am scornfully amused at your appeal to me, of all people in the world the precisely least likely to give you a farthing! first word to all men and boys who care to hear me is-Don't get into debt. Starve and go to heaven, but don't borrow. . . . Don't buy things you can't pay for! And of all manner of debtors, pious people building churches they can't pay for are the most detestable nonsense to me. Can't you preach and pray behind the hedges, or in a sandpit, or in a coalhole first? And of all manner of churches thus idiotically built, iron churches are the damnablest to me. Ever, nevertheless, and in all this saying, your faithful servant, JOHN RUSKIN. Dear me, and when I think of it, how often am I not asked to subscribe to help to pay off debts on churches, mostly, if not all, built by contract, and adorned with bright brass fittings from Birmingham! The ancient church at Benington, time-worn and gray, looked interesting, and the interior would probably have repaid inspection, but the day was so gloriously fine that our love of the open air and cheerful sunshine quite overpowered our antiquarian tastes that sunny morning. Moreover, we did not set out to see everything on our way unless inclined so to do; ours was purely a pleasure tour, the mood of the moment was alone our guide. By the side of the churchyard we noticed a square space enclosed by a wall; we imagined that this must have been an old cattle-pound, but when we passed by it was full of all kinds of rubbish, as though it were the village dustbin. Our road now wound through a very pleasant country, past busy windmills, sleepy farmsteads, and pretty cottages, till we came to the hamlet of Leake, where we observed another very fine church, of a size apparently out of all proportion to the needs of the parish. It may often be noted in Lincolnshire and the eastern counties generally how fine many of the remote country churches are, and how often, alas! such fine architectural monuments are in bad repair for want of sufficient funds to properly maintain them, the surrounding population being purely agricultural and poor; it is difficult to imagine that the population could ever have been much greater, though it may have been wealthier. The question A MATTER OF SENTIMENT 261 arises, How came these grand and large churches to be built, without any probability of their having a congregation at all commensurate with their size? The country became now more open, and our road wound in and out of the level meadows like the letter S, or rather like a succession of such letters, thereby almost doubling the distance from point to point taken in a straight line. We could only presume that the modern road followed the uncertain route of the original bridle-path, which doubtless wound in and out in this provokingly tortuous manner to avoid bad ground and marshy spots. Were Lincolnshire a county in one of the United States, I "guess" that this road would long ago have been made unpicturesquely straight and convenient, the practical American considers it a wicked waste of energy to go two miles in place of one. His idea of road-making resembles that of the ancient Romans in so far as the idea of both is to take the nearest line between two places. "That's the best road," exclaimed a prominent Yankee engineer, "that goes the most direct between two places; beauty is a matter of seeing and sentiment, and to me a straight line is a beautiful thing, because it best fulfils its purpose." So speaks the engineer. Both Nature and the artist, as a rule, abhor straight lines. The next village on our road was Wrangle; since we had left Boston we had hardly been out of sight of a village or a church, but though the villages were numerous they were small. Here at Wrangle again we found a tiny collection of houses, out of which rose another fine and beautiful church, the stones of which had taken upon themselves a lovely soft gray with age. I think there is no country in the world where Time tones and tints the stones of buildings so pleasantly as it does in England. The people in this part of Lincolnshire should be good, if an ample supply of fine churches makes for goodness. Still one can Still one can never be certain of anything in this uncertain world, for does not the poet declare that— Wherever God erects a house of prayer, The latter has the largest congregation. We had been informed by a Lincolnshire antiquary, whom by chance we had become acquainted with during the journey, that the rectory at Wrangle was haunted by a ghost in the shape of a green lady, and that this ghost had upon one occasion left behind her a memento of one of her nocturnal visitations, in the shape of a peculiar ring-surely a singular, if not a very irregular thing, for a spirit to do. Moreover, the enthusiastic and good-natured antiquary most kindly gave us his card to be used as an introduction to the rector, who he said would gladly give us all particulars. The story interested us, and the opportunity that fortune had placed in our way of paying a visit to a haunted house was too attractive to be missed. So, bearing this story in mind, and finding ourselves in Wrangle, we forthwith drove straight up to the rectory, an old-fashioned |