pillars and obelisks, adorns the south aisle; his son was ennobled, whose effigy—­more majestic still, robed and coroneted, with his Viscountess by his side, and her dog (with his name, Jakke, engraven on his shoulder)- -lies smiling, the slender hands crossed in prayer.  But the house was not destined to survive.  The Viscount’s only daughter, the Lady Penelope, looks down from the wall, a fair and delicate lady, the last of her brief race, who, as the old inscription says with a tender simplicity, “dyed a mayd.”  I cannot help wondering, my pretty lady, what your story was; and it will do you no hurt if one, who looks upon your gentle face, sends a wondering message of tenderness behind the veil to your pure spirit, regret for your vanished charm, and the fragrance of your soft bloom, and sadness for all sweet things that fade.

The manor, so I learn, was burnt wantonly by the Roundheads—­there was a battle hereabouts—­on the charge that it had harboured some followers of the king; and so our dreams of greatness and permanence are fulfilled.

The whole church was very neat and spruce; it had suffered a restoration lately.  The walls were stripped of their old plaster and pointed, so that the inside is now rougher than the outside, a thing the ancient builders never intended.  The altar is fairly draped with good hangings behind, and the chancel fitted with new oak stalls and seats, all as neat as a new pin.  As I lingered in the church, reading the simple monuments, a rosy, burly vicar came briskly in, and seeing me there, courteously showed me all the treasures of his house, like Hezekiah.  He took me into the belfry, and there, piled up against the wall, were some splendid Georgian columns and architraves, richly carved in dark brown wood.  I asked what it was.  “Oh, a horrible pompous thing,” he said; “it was behind the altar—­most pagan and unsuitable; we had it all out as soon as I came.  The first moment I entered the church, I said to myself, ‘that must go,’ and I have succeeded, though it was hard enough to collect the money, and actually some of the old people here objected.”  I did not feel it was worth while to cast cold water on the good man’s satisfaction—­but the pity of it!  I do not suppose that a couple of thousand pounds could have reproduced it; and it is simply heart-rending to see such a noble monument of piety and careful love sacrificed to a wave of so-called ecclesiastical taste.  The vicar’s chief pride was a new window, by a fashionable modern firm; quite unobjectionable in design, and with good colour, but desperately uninteresting.  It represented some mild, unemphatic, attenuated saints, all exactly alike, languidly and decorously conversing together, weighed down by heavy drapery, as though wrapped in bales of carpets.  In the lower compartments knelt some dignified persons, similarly habited, in face exactly like the saints above, except that they were fitted out with unaccountable beards—­all