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 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,