The March breeze is chilly: but I can be always warm if I like in my
winter-garden. I turn my horse's head to the red wall of fir-stems,
and leap over the furze-grown bank into my cathedral, wherein if
there be no saints, there are likewise no priestcraft and no idols;
but endless vistas of smooth red green-veined shafts holding up the
warm dark roof, lessening away into endless gloom, paved with rich
brown fir-needle--a carpet at which Nature has been at work for forty
years. Red shafts, green roof, and here and there a pane of blue
sky--neither Owen Jones nor Willement can improve upon that
ecclesiastical ornamentation,--while for incense I have the fresh
healthy turpentine fragrance, far sweeter to my nostrils than the
stifling narcotic odour which fills a Roman Catholic cathedral.
There is not a breath of air within: but the breeze sighs over the
roof above in a soft whisper. I shut my eyes and listen. Surely
that is the murmur of the summer sea upon the summer sands in Devon
far away. I hear the innumerable wavelets spend themselves gently
upon the shore, and die away to rise again.
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