Page:Over fen and wold; (IA overfenwold00hissiala).pdf/384

 coming of the landscape gardener, alas! the restful past-time garden of our ancestors went out of fashion, and with it the old garden architecture also. Formerly the artificialness of the garden was acknowledged. The garden is still an artificial production—Nature more or less tamed—but instead of glorying in the fact we try to disguise it. The architect's work now stops at the house, so we find no longer in our gardens the quaint sun-dial, the stone terrace, the built summer-house—a real house, though tiny, and structurally decorative—the recessed and roomy seat-ways that Marcus Stone so delights to paint, the fountains, and the like; yet what pleasant and picturesque features they all are! Now we have the uncomfortable rustic seat and ugly rustic summer-house of wood, generally deal, and varnished, because they look more rural! Still there are some people who think the old way best!

The small church at Harrington is apparently a modern building, containing, however, in strange contrast to its new-looking walls, a series of ancient and very interesting tombs. I say the church is apparently modern, for I have seen ancient churches so thoroughly restored as to seem only just finished. But the restorer, or rebuilder, here deserves a word of praise for the careful manner in which the monuments of armoured warriors and others, ages ago dust and ashes, have been cared for. These monuments are to the Harrington and Coppledike families, and range from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries, supplying a good example of almost every style of sepulchral memorial to the dead, beginning