It Will Be Long Before Education
Drives The Natural Love Of The Woods Out Of The Children's Hearts.
Of old
time a village school used to be held in an ancient building, the lower
part of which was occupied as almshouses.
Underneath the ancient folk
lived as best they might, while the young folk learned and gave their
class responses, or romped on the floor overhead. The upper part of the
building belonged to one owner, the lower part to another landlord. It
came about that the roof decayed and the upper owner suggested to the
lower owner that they should agree in bearing the cost of repairs. Upon
which the owner of the basement remarked that he contemplated - pulling
his part down. -
In these hamlets along the foot of the hills ancient stone crosses are
often found. One of them has retained its top perfect, and really is a
cross, not a shaft only. This is, I think, rare. Sometimes in the village
street, the slender column grey against the green trees, sometimes in the
churchyard, these crosses come on the mind like a sudden enigma. It
requires an effort to grasp their meaning, so long have the ideas passed
away which led to their erection. They almost startle modern thought. How
many years since the peasant women knelt at their steps! On the base of
one which has a sculptured shaft the wall-rue fern was growing. A young
starling was perched on the yew by it; he could but just fly, and
fluttered across to the sill of the church window. Young birds called
pettishly for food from the bushes. Upon the banks hart's-tongue was
coming up fresh and green, and the early orchis was in flower. Fern and
flower and fledglings had come again as they have come every year since
the oldest of these ancient shafts was erected, for life is older, life
is greyer, than the weather-beaten mouldings. But life, too, is fresh and
young; the stern thought in the stone becomes more cold and grim as the
centuries pass away. In the crevices at the foot of another cross
wallflowers blossomed, and plants of evening primrose, not yet in flower,
were growing. Under a great yew lay the last decaying beam of the stocks.
A little yew tree grew on the top of the church tower, its highest branch
just above the parapet. A thrush perhaps planted it - thrushes are fond of
the viscous yew berries. Through green fields, in which the grass as
rising high and sweet, a footpath took me by a solitary mill with an
undershot wheel. The sheds about here are often supported on round
columns of stone. Beyond the mill is a pleasant meadow, quiet, still, and
sunlit; buttercup, sorrel, and daisy flowered among the grasses down to
the streamlet, where comfrey, with white and pink-lined bells, stood at
the water's edge. A renowned painter, Walker, who died early, used to
work in this meadow:
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