If we are not able to draw or model, we possess
the power to select, group, and clothe with an ideal grace, which is
the very soul of art, and every man and woman, every bush, nay, every
cabbage, cup, and saucer, provided only it be not actually before us,
becomes part of a divine picture. Would that we could do with the
present what we do with the past! We CAN do something if we try.
At the end of Church Street came the vicarage, and then the
churchyard, with the church. Beyond was the park, which half
embraced Cowfold, for it was possible to enter it not only from
Church Street, but from North Street, which ran at right angles to
it. The Hall was not much. It was a large plain stone mansion,
built in the earlier part of the eighteenth century; but in front of
the main entrance was a double row of limes stretching for a quarter
of a mile, and the whole of the park was broken up into soft swelling
hills, from whose tops, owing to the flatness of the country round,
an almost immeasurable distance could be seen, gradually losing
itself in deepening mist of tenderest blue. The park, too, was not
rigidly circumscribed. Public roads led through it.
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