Hatton, so far as I could discover,
has no public-house, no shop, no contiguity of roofs, (as in most
English villages, however small,) but is merely an ancient neighborhood
of farm-houses, spacious, and standing wide apart, each within its own
precincts, and offering a most comfortable aspect of orchards,
harvest-fields, barns, stacks, and all manner of rural plenty. It seemed
to be a community of old settlers, among whom everything had been going
on prosperously since an epoch beyond the memory of man; and they kept a
certain privacy among themselves, and dwelt on a cross-road at the
entrance of which was a barred gate, hospitably open, but still
impressing me with a sense of scarcely warrantable intrusion. After all,
in some shady nook of those gentle Warwickshire slopes there may have
been a denser and more populous settlement, styled Hatton, which I never
reached.
Emerging from the by-road, and entering upon one that crossed it at
right angles and led to Warwick, I espied the church of Doctor Parr.
Like the others which I have described, it had a low stone tower,
square, and battlemented at its summit: for all these little churches
seem to have been built on the same model, and nearly at the same
measurement, and have even a greater family-likeness than the
cathedrals.
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