Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/391

and its Green Border-Land. past generations. In renovating and embellishing, the blending of the ages has been accomplished very happily. One has been softened into the other delicately, making almost a seamless whole of beauty. Even the latest additions of iron lacework harmonize with carvings in wood and stone centuries old. Two of these are really masterpieces of artistic design and mechanical skill. The screen which divides the choir from the nave was wrought by Mr. Skidmore, of Coventry. It resembles a thin hedge of tressed blackberry tendrils, leafed to the life, interspersed with seed-vessels of the wild rose and currant, and strawberry blossoms, so natural and graceful that one might fancy that they could almost breathe forth the odour of green life upon the music of the choir. The arched gateway of this hedge of metal shrubbery is an exquisite work of art. Sixteen shining angels, back to back, stand among the topmost boughs and blossoms of this floral wall, eight facing the singers in the choir and eight the congregation in the nave. They form an angelic band of singers, surpliced in gold, keeping time with harp and voice apparently with the human choristers in white robes below and the voices of all the worshippers of the great assembly. This idea is wrought out to all the perfection that art could give it.

The pulpit has no equal in England of the same