The fine old church has some Saxon work in it, whilst the doorways and many other portions are Norman.  Its delightful simplicity and brightness is what pleases one most.  On coming down into the village, one notices a little square on the left, not at all like those one sees in London, but very picturesque and clean looking.  In the olden times were to be seen in many villages little courts of this kind; in the centre of them was usually a great tree, round which the old people would sit on summer evenings, while the children danced and played around.  Gilbert White speaks of one at Selborne, which he calls the “Plestor.”  The original name was “Pleystow,” which means a play place.  We have noticed them in many parts of the Cotswold country.  Here, too, children are playing about under the shade of some delightful trees in the centre of the miniature square, whilst the variegated foliage sets off the gabled cottages which form three sides of it.

I have often wondered, as I stood by these chestnut trees, whether there is any architecture more perfect in its simplicity and grace than that which lies around me here.  Not a cottage is in sight that is not worthy of the painter’s brush; not a gable or a chimney that would not be worthy of a place in the Royal Academy.  The little square is bordered for six months of the year with the prettiest of flowers.  Even as late as December you may see roses in bloom on the walls, and chrysanthemums of varied shade in every garden.  Then, as we passed onwards,

     “On the stream’s bank, and everywhere, appeared
        Fair dwellings, single or in social knots;
      Some scattered o’er the level, others perch’d
        On the hill-sides—­a cheerful, quiet scene.”

      WORDSWORTH.

There is a Gothic quaintness about all the buildings in the Cotswolds, great and small alike, which is very charming.  Bibury is indeed a pretty village.  As you walk along the main street which runs parallel with the river, an angler is busy “swishing” his rod violently in the air to “dry” the fly, ere he essays to drop it over the nose of one of the speckled fario which abound; so be careful to step down off the path which runs alongside the stream, in case you should put the fish “down” and spoil the sport.  And now on our left, beyond the green, may be seen a line of gabled cottages called “Arlington Row,” a picture of which by G. Leslie was hung at the Royal Academy this year (1898).

A few hundred yards on you stop to inspect the spring which rises in the garden of the Swan Hotel.  It has been said that two million gallons a day is the minimum amount of water poured out by this spring.  It consists of the rain, which, falling on a large area of the hill country, gradually finds its way through the limestone rocks and eventually comes out here.  It would be interesting to trace the course of some of these underground rivers; for a torrent of water such as this cannot flow down through the