looked out on this gray garden wall, over which the fig-tree clambers, and “relished versing.” The church stands close by, a ragged cedar beside it, an elm drooping before its plain tower. We take a long look before descending again to the river, like Dyer
“resolved, this charming day,
Into the open fields to stray,
And have no roof above our head
But that whereon the gods do tread.”
Just below Catthorpe, by a long line of arches called Dow
STANFORD CHURCH
(or Dove) Bridge, Watling Street pushes across the river with Roman directness. This bridge marks the meeting-point of three counties, for beyond it we step into Warwickshire. It is indifferently modern, yet “the scene, though simple, aided by a group of cattle then passing, had sufficient attraction in the meridian of a summer sun to induce” the egregious Ireland “to attempt a sketch of it as a picturesque view,” and supply us with a sentence to be quoted a thousand times during our voyage, and always with ribald appreciation.
CATTHORPE CHURCH
The valley narrows as we draw near Rugby. Clifton on Dunsmore, eminent by situation only, stands boldly up on the left, and under it, by Clifton mill, the stream runs down to Brownsover. Brownsover too has its mill, with a pool and cluster of wych-elms below. And hard by we find (as we think) Tom Brown’s willow, the tree which wouldn’t “throw out straight hickory shoots twelve feet long, with no leaves, worse luck!” where Tom sat aloft, and “Velveteens,” the keeper, below, through that soft, hazy day in the Mayfly season, till the sun came slanting through the branches, and told of locking-up near at hand. We are hushed as we stand before it, and taste the reward of such as “identify.”