V
CHARM
There is a little village here near Cambridge the homely, summer-
sounding name of which is Haslingfield. It is a straggling hamlet
of white-walled, straw-thatched cottages, among orchards and old
elms, full of closes of meadow-grass, and farmsteads with ricks and
big-timbered barns. It has a solid, upstanding Tudor church, with
rather a grand tower, and four solid corner turrets; and it has,
too, its little bit of history in the manor-house, of which only
one high-shouldered wing remains, with tall brick chimneys. It
stands up above some mellow old walls, a big dove-cote, and a row
of ancient fish-ponds. Here Queen Elizabeth once spent a night upon
the wing. Close behind the village, a low wold, bare and calm, with
a belt or two of trees, runs steeply up.
The simplest and quietest place imaginable, with a simple and
remote life, hardly aware of itself, flowing tranquilly through it;
yet this little village, by some felicity of grouping and
gathering, has the rare and incomparable gift of charm. I cannot
analyse it, I cannot explain it, yet at all times and in all
lights, whether its orchards are full of bloom and scent, and the
cuckoo flutes from the holt down the soft breeze, or in the bare
and leafless winter, when the pale sunset glows beyond the wold
among the rifted cloud-banks, it has the wonderful appeal of
beauty, a quality which cannot be schemed for or designed, but
which a very little mishandling can sweep away.
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