SION 



five hundred years to build ; generation after generation helped 

 to evolve the idea of that first builder, whose very name probably 

 has passed into oblivion ! The sculptor, and the carver in oak, 

 and the designer of stained glass, each in turn threw himself self- 

 lessly into the work, raising for others the carved columns, the 

 curious gargoyles ; decorating the facade of the great building 

 with the sculptured figures of saint and martyr, carving the oaken 

 screen, the stalls and the pulpit, filling the tall windows with jewelled 

 glass and all this unostentatiously, each one doing, without fuss 

 or sense of special merit, his appointed task each man literally 

 " doing his bit," and doing it well, because he loved it ! They had 

 faith in God, those old artists, and their labour was part of their 

 religion, and therefore do " their works live after them," though 

 they themselves have long been dust, and many are forgotten. 



It follows that if a man who planted a single tree that giant 

 cedar near the north side of Sion, for instance, which has " had 

 a past" so a gardener told me was blown down in a certain 

 memorable snow-storm twenty or thirty years ago, and then 

 replanted, and still survives, his great arms propped up with iron 

 supports if such a man well merits our gratitude for truly the 

 tree is beautiful ! if the memory of such deserves posterity's 

 blessing, how great is posterity's debt to him who planted many 

 hundreds of trees, the Beeches of Burnham, the oaks of Windsor 

 and Richmond, the trees of all sorts and climates at Kew, and 

 the no less magnificent specimens at Sion itself. Kindly permitted 

 for a time to wander over Sion, I offer my gratitude both to the 

 owner and to the landscape-gardener, whosoever he was, that laid 

 out these pleasure-grounds. Like the cathedral builder, he too 

 dreamt this garden ; laboriously he dug and delved, and pruned 

 and watered, and every sapling he planted, with due regard to 

 its proper place in the whole scheme, was one step onwards towards 

 the realization of his dream. He illustrated in his own person 

 two, at least, of the Christian virtues : charity and faith ; for what is 

 charity but unselfishness, love ? and in a degree his was an unselfish 

 act. And what is faith but and this might well be the landscape- 

 gardener's motto '' the substance of things hoped for, the evidence 

 of things not seen" 



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