And that was how we found it. There is a satirical saying in the other villages that if you want to find the church at Priors Dean you must first cut down the nettles. There were no nettles nor weeds of any kind, only the small ancient church with its little shingled spire standing in the middle of a large green graveyard with about a dozen or fifteen gravestones scattered about, three old tombs, and, close to the building, an ancient yew tree. This is a big, and has been a bigger, tree, as a large part of the trunk has perished on one side, but as it stands it measures nearly twenty-four feet round a yard from the earth. This, with a small farmhouse, in old times a manor house, and its outbuildings and a cottage or two, make the village. So quiet a spot is it that to see a human form or hear a human voice comes almost as a surprise. The little antique church, the few stones, the dark ancient tree--these are everything, and the effect on the mind is strangely grateful--a sense of enduring peace, with something of that solitariness and desolation which we find in unspoilt wildernesses. From these smallest churches, which appear like a natural growth where they are seen, I turn to the large and new, and the largest of all at this place--that of Privett. From its gorgeous yet vacant and {191} cold interior, and from the whole vast structure, including that necessary ingredient in an elegant landscape, the soaring spire visible for many miles around, I turn away as from a jarring and discordant thing--the feeling one experiences at the sight of those brand-new big houses built by over-rich stock-jobbers on many hills and open heaths in Surrey and, alas! in Hampshire. I do not, however, say that all new and large churches raised in small rustic centres appear as discordant things. Even in the group of villages which I have named there is a new and comparatively large one which moves one to admiration the church of Blackmoor. Here the vegetation and surroundings are unlike those which accord best with the small typical structures, the low tower and shingled spire. The tall, square tower of Blackmoor, of white stone roofed with red tiles, rises amid the pines of Wolmer Forest, simple and beautiful in shape, and gives a touch of grace and grateful colour to that darker, austere nature. From every point of view it is a pleasure to the eye, and because of its enduring beauty the memory of the man who raised it is like a perfume in the wilderness. It is, however, time that bestows the best grace, the indescribable charm to the village church--long centuries of time, which gives the feeling, the expression, of immemorial peace to the weathered and ivied building itself and the surrounding space, the churchyard, with its green heaps, and scattered stones, and funeral yew. {192} [Sidenote: Change in gravestones]