BIRDS OF THE THATCH 189 



the saying of Aquinas and put it thus : " Ubi 

 angeli, ibi aves." 



The surroundings of the Rectory are in perfect 

 keeping with it. Little advantage would it be to 

 have a picturesque centre, if, as is so often the 

 case with the lovely old-world manor-houses which 

 the lapse of centuries has turned into farmhouses, 

 the outbuildings were of a wholly different type, and 

 were roofed in with a mean and ugly slate, hot in 

 summer and cold in winter, or with that still greater 

 abomination of modern times, corrugated iron. 

 One single outbuilding, thus roofed, jars upon the 

 feelings and mars the effect of the whole, much as 

 one bit of white paper, carelessly dropped, mars, for 

 the moment, all the beauty of a neatly-shaven lawn. 

 The Rectory outbuildings, numerous as they are, 

 and headed by a grand old tithe-barn, of which I 

 shall have something to say hereafter, are all of 

 them thatched, the most beautiful, surely, and most 

 suggestive of all coverings for man, and that which 

 is most characteristic of English rural life and 

 harmonises best with English scenery. It has its 

 drawbacks, no doubt : it is perishable ; it has to 

 pay double insurance duty against fire, and, owing 

 to the agricultural depression which has turned so 

 much land that was arable into pasture, it is not 



