14 THE SOUTH COUNTRY 



or heroic or divine figure, might more fitly than in many 

 another stand in such a place. A figure, it should be, 

 like that benign proud Demeter in marble now banished 

 to a recess in a cold gallery, before which a man of any re- 

 ligion, or class, or race, or time might bow and lay down 

 something of his burden and take away what makes him 

 other than he was. She would be at home and blithe 

 again, enshrined in the rain or in this flowery sunlight of 

 an English green, near the wych elm and sycamore and 

 the walls of stone, the mortar mixed, as in all true 

 buildings, with human blood. 



