[Illustration: TOWER OF CHIPPING CAMPDEN CHURCH]
The fascinations of Campden held us the summer day long. We must needs explore the church interior, which has suffered at the hands of the restorer; yet its chancel brasses, wrought with figures of plump woolstaplers, their decorous and comely dames, and their kneeling children, reward a close survey. I especially rejoiced in one complacent burgher, attended by three wimpled wives, and a long row of sons and daughters all of the same size. There is a curious chapel, too, where we came upon the second Viscount Campden, in marble shroud and coronet, ceremoniously handing, with a most cynical and unholy expression, his lady from the sepulchre. There was a ruined guildhall to see, and some antique almshouses of distinguished beauty. As we looked, an old man came feebly forth and bowed his white head on the low enclosing wall in an attitude of grief or prayer. We learned later that one of the inmates had died that very hour. We went over the works of the new Guild of Handicraft, an attempt to realise, here in the freshness of the wolds, the ideals of Ruskin and Morris. We cast wistful eyes up at Dover's Hill, on whose level summit used to be held at Whitsuntide the merry Cotswold Games. "Heigh for Cotswold!" But it was the hottest day of the summer, and we contented ourselves with the phrase.
Other famous Cotswold towns are "Stow-on-the-Wold, where the wind blows cold"; Northleach in the middle of the downs, desolate now, but once full of the activities of those wool-merchants commemorated by quaint brasses in the splendid church,--brasses which show them snugly at rest in their furred gowns, with feet comfortably planted on stuffed woolpack or the fleecy back of a sheep, or, more precariously, on a pair of shears; Burford, whose High Street and church are as noteworthy as Campden's own; Winchcombe, once a residence of the Mercian kings and a famous shrine of pilgrimage; Cirencester, the "Capital of the Cotswolds," built above a ruined Roman city and possessing a church of surpassing richness. How we longed for months of free-footed wandering over these exhilarating uplands with their grey settlements like chronicles writ in stone! But Father Time was shaking his hour-glass just behind us, in his marplot fashion, and since it had to be a choice, we took the evening train to Chipping Norton.