210 HAMPSHIRE DAYS 



unlike those which accord best with the small typical 

 structures, the low tower and shingled spire. The tall, 

 square tower of Blackmoor, of white stone roofed with 

 red tiles, rises amid the pines of Wolmer Forest, simple 

 and beautiful in shape, and gives a touch of grace 

 and grateful colour to that darker, austere nature. 

 From every point of view it is a pleasure to the eye, 

 and because of its enduring beauty the memory of the 

 man who raised it is like a perfume in the wilderness. 



It is, however, time that bestows the best grace, the 

 indescribable charm to the village church long cen- 

 turies of time, which gives the feeling, the expression, 

 of immemorial peace to the weathered and ivied 

 building itself and the surrounding space, the church- 

 yard, with its green heaps, and scattered stones, and 

 funeral yew. 



The associated feeling, the expression, is undoubtedly 

 the chief thing in the general effect, but the constituents 

 or objects which compose the scene are in themselves 

 pleasing; and one scarcely less important than the 

 building itself, the universal grass, the dark, red-barked 

 tree, is the gravestone. I mean the gravestone that is 

 attractive in shape, which may be seen in every old 

 village churchyard in Hampshire ; for not all the stones 

 are of this character. The stone that is beautiful dates 

 back half a century at least, but very few are as old as 

 a century and a half. When we get that far and farther 

 back the inscription is obliterated or indecipherable. 

 Only here and there we may by chance find some stone, 



