Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/257

Rh size present in these latter days. The great centre structure is the massive old church, evidently the growth of centuries, standing in a graveyard probably containing more inhabitants than the living population can number. It is truly an impressive old building, wearing its venerable antiquity with hardly a court plaster of modern improvement to cover a wrinkle. And all the buildings near and around seem to have assimilated their faces to its aged countenance. You do not see here, as elsewhere frequently, a gray-headed patriarch of eighty in boy's clothes decked with bright buttons of brass or steel. But the old church stands up among many companions of its younger years—among which are several half-timber houses with their black beams carved by the best carpenter's genius two centuries ago.

After an hour's walk about the church and village, we started for that celebrated hiding-place of Charles II, Boscobel. Passed Aston Hall, a comfortable-looking mansion, that showed a comely and happy face in the setting sun-light. Two splendid chesnut trees stand like sentinels in front of the house, and their leaves had drunk in so much sunshine that the green had turned halfway to gold. In the park, near the road, stood the most perfectly symmetrical oak I ever saw, and nature alone had made its toilet. There was no sign of the woodman's axe, or hedgebill,