thickly populated was our countryside in the reign of 

 Queen Elisabeth. Our smallest villages have pedigrees 

 which put the oldest families to shame. So ancient are 

 some of our rustic settlements that they seem to have 

 grown into the landscape and to have become an indis 

 tinguishable part of surrounding nature. Indeed it is 

 difficult to conjure up this picture of English country 

 without thinking at the same time of our old villages and 

 of the cottage gardens with their 



e gold dusted snapdragon, 

 Sweet William with its homely cottage smell 

 And stocks in fragrant blow * 



which glow above the powdery country roads under the 

 midsummer sky. The unique and incommunicable 

 beauty of the English landscape constitutes for most 

 Englishmen the strongest of the ties that bind them to 

 their country.&quot; 



That is true ; and one reason why the influence and 

 sense of the landscape is incommunicable is that it has 

 been carved by man. The English have made the land 

 scape at least in southern England, and on this account 

 it is a very different thing, in essence as in degree, from 

 Snowdonia or the Lakes or such magnificent but less 

 homely, less human glories as take travellers to Switzer 

 land or the Rockies* The characters of the manuscript 

 matter much more than the vellum on which they are 

 written. 



These lovely villages express in their scenic form their 

 spiritual virtue. The soul and the body are inseparable ; 

 the preservation of them from pink roofs and ribbon 

 development as well as from more essential dangers 

 has become a national cry wkhiti the last few years. 

 The chief reason for saving them is that they are the 



