Of course one would not assign to Shorthouse a very high place in English literature, beautiful as his best work is.  But a writer may have an interest which is out of proportion to the value of his writings.  The interest of Shorthouse is the interest which attaches to the blooming of a curious and exotic flower in a place where its presence is absolutely unaccountable; he probably will not maintain his hold upon the minds of a later generation, because there is no coherent system of thought in his book.  Inglesant is a mere courtly mirror, the prey of his moods and his surroundings, in which beautiful tones of religious feeling are engagingly reflected.  But to all who study the development of English prose, Shorthouse will have a definite value, as a spontaneous and lonely outcrop of poetical prose-writing in an alien soil; an isolated worker foreshowing in his secluded and graceful talent the rise of a new school in English literature, the appearance of a plant which may be expected in the future, if not in the immediate future, to break into leaf and bloom, into colour and fragrance.

LII

I found myself the other day in the neighbourhood of Wells.  I had hitherto rather deliberately avoided going there, because so many people whose taste and judgment are wholly unreliable have told me that I ought to see it.  The instinct to disagree with the majority is a noble one, and has perhaps effected more for humanity than any other instinct; but it must be cautiously indulged in.

In this case I resisted the instinct to abstain from visiting Wells; and I was glad that I did so, because, in spite of the fact that most people consider Wells to be a very beautiful place, it is undoubtedly true that it is most beautiful.  Wells and Oxford on a large scale, Burford and Chipping Campden on a small scale, are in my experience the four most beautiful places in England, as far as buildings go.  There are other places which are full of beautiful buildings; but there is a harmony about these four places which is a very rare and delightful quality.

Wells, as a matter of fact, is almost impossibly beautiful, and incredibly romantic.  It is an almost perfectly mediaeval place, with the enormous advantage that it is also old, a quality which we are apt to forget that mediaeval places, when first built, did not possess.  I do not think that Wells, when first built, was probably more than just a beautiful place.  But it has now all grown old together, undisturbed, unvisited.  It has crumbled and weathered and mellowed into one of the most enchanting places in the world.