Great Chart, as I saw while still far off, is a village typical of this
country that I love, if indeed a place so completely itself is typical
of anything: a little English village, but it outfaces the whole world
in its sureness of itself, its quietness and air of immemorial
antiquity. Many a city older by far looks parvenu beside Great Chart.
Let us consider, with tears if you will, what they are making of Rome
and be thankful that our ways are not their ways. For what wins you at
once in Great Chart is the obvious fact that it has always stood there
on its hill over the Weald, and as far as one may see at a glance, much
the same as it stands to-day. And what delights you is the church there
on the highest ground, on the last hill overlooking the great Weald, a
sign in the sky, a portent, a necessary thing natural to the landscape.
What you see is a rectangular building with three eastern gables over
three Decorated windows, a long nave roof over square Perpendicular
windows and clerestory, flat outer roofs and tall western Tower, a
noble thing significant of our civilisation and the Faith out of which
it has come.
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