PEASANTS' RELIGIOUS FEELING 205 



with another world. So the poor peasant who was 

 born and lives in a thatched cottage, with his limited 

 intelligence, his animism, associates the idea of the 

 unseen world with the sacred objects he has seen 

 and known and handled the small ancient building, 

 the red-barked, dark-leafed yew, the green mounds 

 and lichened gravestones among which he played as 

 a child, and the dim, low-roofed interior of what was 

 to him God's House. Whatever there is in his mind 

 that is least earthly, whatever thoughts he may have 

 of the unseen world and a life beyond this life, were 

 inseparably bound up with these visible things. 



We need not follow this line any farther; those who 

 believe with me that the sense of the beautiful is God's 

 best gift to the human soul will see that I have put the 

 matter on other and higher grounds. The small village 

 church with its low tower or grey-shingled spire among 

 the shade trees, is beautiful chiefly because man and 

 nature with its softening processes have combined to 

 make it a fit part of the scene, a building which looks 

 as natural and harmonious as an old hedge which man 

 planted once and nature replanted many times, and as 

 many an old thatched timbered cottage, and many an 

 old grey ruin, ivy grown, with red valerian blooming on 

 its walls. 



To pull down one of these churches to put in its place 

 a gigantic Gothic structure in brick or stone, better 

 suited in size (and ugliness) for a London or Liverpool 

 church than for a small rustic village in Hampshire, is 

 nothing less than a crime. 



