Page:Early Reminiscences.djvu/303

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1854-1857 247 Christian Church we are urged to endeavour to see. The third Self is that aspect of us which presents itself to our fellows, generally our detractors, sometimes our admirers. This phantom is usually an exaggeration or a diminution of the truth. Lew House had been built of stone quarried out of the rocks about the Holy Well in the Glen. Silver coins have been found in it under the floors and in the walls from the age of Edward II downwards. The church had been built of the same stone, but one of a better quality was discovered in Raddon Wood, and the church tower was constructed of that, and with that Lew House is faced. All the stone employed for church and house was bedded in clay ; the lime, used only for external pointing and internal plastering, had been brought by pack-horses from Plymouth. It was nc/t till the eighteenth century that William Drake Gould discovered limestone on the property, in a bed running east and west. The slate quarry had been worked previously, for 1627 was found inscribed in white on one of the slates covering Galford, and the slate was of the Lew quality. Should I ever come into the estate it was my purpose, as already said, completely to restore the church, and to recast the manor house, doing away with the alterations and disfigurements to which it had been subjected, and to give it more character than it then possessed. Quicquid sibi imperavit animus, obtinuit," wrote Seneca. Little did I expect to be able to accomplish the objects of my desire. It is a curious fact that my father, who had an eye for the beautiful in Nature, whose paintings in sepia, in water colour and in oils, are good, should have been totally incapable of appreciating the beautiful in architecture. My aunt, when living in Plymouth, expressed to me her pleasure at seeing the destruction of some of the ancient merchant houses in the street leading to the Old Port, and later she was incensed with me because, as she expressed it, I was " undoing everything that my grandfather and father had done to improve the church and the house." And she as well was artistic, and her paintings, mainly of figures, show great cleverness and aptitude with the brush. My father had a great many ideas in his head, and much