. The Old Road . its course. It skirts by the side of, and finallypasses through, woods which still bear the name of the Chan-tries, and climbs to that isolated summit where stands thechapel of St. Thomas: the Martyrs chapel, which, in thedecay of religion and the corruption of tradition, came to becalled St. Marthas. This spot, for all its proximity to London and to the villasof the rich, preserves a singular air of loneliness. It has adignity and an appeal which I had thought impossible in landof which every newspaper is full; and that morning, beforemen were stirring, with the mist all abou
. The Old Road . its course. It skirts by the side of, and finallypasses through, woods which still bear the name of the Chan-tries, and climbs to that isolated summit where stands thechapel of St. Thomas: the Martyrs chapel, which, in thedecay of religion and the corruption of tradition, came to becalled St. Marthas. This spot, for all its proximity to London and to the villasof the rich, preserves a singular air of loneliness. It has adignity and an appeal which I had thought impossible in landof which every newspaper is full; and that morning, beforemen were stirring, with the mist all about us and the littlenoises of animals in the woods, we recovered its past. The hillresponded to the ancient camps, just southward and above responded to its twin height of St. Catherines : the wholelandscape had forgotten modern time, and we caught its spirit98 e S V o Jl a_ s tJ u s 6 6 0 3 ^ n H •0 _^ Si 09 a m^ w^ Ml . a 0 rt M J3 s *^ U 4J 0 01 ^ : *> =^» M (11 M *3 a /3 to a o o ctf e CO ^ ■o c. OF THE ROAD the more easily that it relieved us of our fears lest in this beltnear London the Old Road should lose its power over us. It has been conjectured, upon such slight evidence asarchaeology possesses, that the summit was a place of great rings of earth stood here before the beginningof history; certainly it was the sacred crown for the refugees ofFarley Heath, of Holmbury, of Anstie Bury, and of whateverother stations of war may have crowned these defiant hills. If it saw rites which the Catholic Church at last subdued,we know nothing of them; we possess only that thread of tra-dition which has bo rarely been broken in western Europe:the avenue, whereby, untU the sixteenth century, all our racecould look back into the very origins of their blood. The hUl was an isolated peak peculiar and observable. Suchseparate heights have called up worship always wherever theywere found : the Middle Ages gave this place what they gaveto the great outstan
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, bookidcu3192402800, bookyear1904
