Page:Over fen and wold; (IA overfenwold00hissiala).pdf/262

 contentment and repose. Old time-mellowed farm-*steads and quiet cottage homes were dotted about, from which uprose circling films of blue-gray smoke, agreeably suggestive of human occupancy. "How English it all looked," we exclaimed, and these five words fitly describe the scenery. In that sentence pages of word-painting are condensed!

As we proceeded above the woods to the left and the right of us rose two tall tapering spires, belonging respectively—at least so we made out from our map—to the hamlets of Walcot and Treckingham. These spires reminded us what splendid churches some of the small Lincolnshire villages possess; there they stand in remote country districts often hastening to decay, with no one to admire them. The ancient architects who

Built the soaring spires That sing their soul in stone,

seem to have built these songs in vain: for what avails a poem that no one prizes? The Lincolnshire rustic is made of stern stuff, he is honest, hardy, civil, manly, independent (at least that is the opinion I have formed of him), but he is not a bit poetical, and a good deal of a Puritan: I fancy, if I have read him aright, he would as soon worship in a barn as in a church; indeed, I think he would prefer to do so if he had his own way, as being more homelike. A clergyman I met on the journey and who confided in me said, "To get on in Lincolnshire, before all things it is necessary to believe in game, and not to trouble too much about