n the road pushed on, to die away
among the fields. But there, at the very end of the village, stood the
house of which we were in search; and it was with a touch of awe, with a
quickening heart, that I drew near to a place of such sweet and gracious
memories, a place so dear to more than one of the heroes of art.

One comes to the goal of an artistic pilgrimage with a certain sacred
terror; either the place is disappointing, or it is utterly unlike what
one anticipates. I knew Kelmscott so well from Rossetti's letters, from
Morris's own splendid and loving description, from pictures, from the
tales of other pilgrims, that I felt I could not be disappointed; and I
was not. It was not only just like what I had pictured it to be, but
it had a delicate and natural grace of its own as well. The house was
larger and more beautiful, the garden smaller and not less beautiful,
than I had imagined. I had not thought it was so shy, so rustic a place.
It is very difficult to get any clear view of the Manor. By the road are
cottages, and a big building, half storehouse, half wheelwright's shop,
to serve the homely needs of the farm. Through the open door one could
see a bench with tools; and planks, staves, spokes, waggon-tilts,
faggots, were all stacked in a pleasant confusion. Then came a walled
kitchen-garden, with some big shrubs, bay and laurustinus, rising
plumply within; beyond which the grey house, spread thin with plaster,
held up its gables and chimneys over a stone-tiled roof. To the left,
big barns and byres--a farm-man leading in a young bull with a pole at
the nose-ring; beyond that, open fields, with a dyke and a flood-wall of
earth, grown over with nettles, withered sedges in the watercourse,
and elms in which the rooks were clamorously building. We met with the
ready, simple Berkshire courtesy; we were referred to a gardener who was
in charge. To speak with him, we walked round to the other side of the
house, to an open space of grass, where the fowls picked merrily, and
the old farm-lumber, broken coops, disused ploughs, lay comfortably
about. "How I love tidiness!" wrote Morris once. Yet I did not feel that
he would have done other than love all this natural and simple litter of
the busy farmstead.

Here the venerable house appeared more stately still. Through an open
door in a wall we caught a sight of the old standards of an orchard, and
borders with the spikes of spring-flowers pushing through the mould. The