The ancient Roman town of Cirencester, too, affords many historical remains of the same era.  But it is to the part which English hands and hearts have played towards beautifying the Cotswold district that I would fain direct attention; to the stately Abbey Church of Cirencester and its glorious south porch, with its rich fan-tracery groining within and its pierced battlements and pinnacles without; to the arched gateway of twelfth century work, the sole remnant of that once famous monastery—­the mitred Abbey of St. Mary—­founded by the piety of the first Henry, and overthrown by the barbarity of the last king of that name, who ordained “that all the edifices within the site and precincts of the monastery should be pulled down and carried away";—­it is to the glorious windows of Fairford Church—­the most beautiful specimens remaining to us of glass of the early part of the sixteenth century—­and to many an ancient church and mediaeval manor house still standing throughout this wide district, “to point a moral of adorn a tale,” that we must look for traces of the exquisite workmanship of English hands in bygone days, “the only witnesses, perhaps, that remain to us of the faith and fear of nations.  All else for which the builders sacrificed has passed away—­all their living interests and aims and achievements.  We know not for what they laboured, and we see no evidence of their reward.  Victory, wealth, authority, happiness—­all have departed, though bought by many a bitter sacrifice.  But of them, and their life, and their toil upon earth, one reward, one evidence is left to us in those grey heaps of deep-wrought stone.  They have taken with them to the grave their powers, their honours, and their errors; but they have left us their adoration.” [2]

[Footnote 2:  Ruskin, “Seven Lamps of Architecture.”]

Too many of our modern buildings are a sham from beginning to end—­sham marble, sham stonework, sham wallpapers, sham wainscoting, sham carpets on the ground, and sham people walking about on them:  even the very bookcases are sham.  In these old Cotswold houses we have the reverse.  The stonework is real, and the material is the best of its kind—­good, honest, native stone.  The oak wainscoting is real, though patched with deal and painted white in recent times.  The same pains in the carving are apparent in those parts of the house which are never seen except by the servants, as in the important rooms.  And so it is with all the work of three, four, and five hundred years ago.  The builders may have had their faults, their prejudices, and their ignorances,—­their very simplicity may have been the means of saving them from error,—­but they were at all events truthful and genuine.

In many villages throughout the Cotswolds are to be seen ancient wayside crosses of exquisite workmanship and design.  These were for the most part erected in the fourteenth century.  One of the best specimens of the kind stands in the market-place of old Malmesbury, hard by the ancient monastery there.  The date of this cross is A.D. 1480.  Leland remarks upon it as follows:  “There is a right faire and costely peace of worke for poor market folks to stand dry when rayne cummeth; the men of the towne made this peace of worke in hominum memoria.”  Malmesbury, by the bye, is just outside the Cotswold district.