not without excitement to steer one's course over unknown and forsaken
ground by chart and compass. These needful guides then prove their
value, and in a hilly country an altitude-barometer is a friend not
to be despised. It is not without some pride in one's self-reliance
to find one's self five miles from a railway station, as I did at
Stapleford Abbotts; and, though my special quest was all in vain
at several halting-places that day, I met with a Norman doorway at
Lambourn Church which archaeologists would call a dream, the axe-work
of the old masons as clean cut and as perfect as though it had been
done last week; and in taking a near cut at a guess across country for
Stapleford Tawney I mind me that I lost my way, or thought I had, but
the mariner's needle was true, and emerging in a green avenue I saw
before me a finger-post marked "To Tawney Church." I took off my
hat and respectfully saluted that finger-post, and was soon in
the churchyard, where I haply lighted upon one of the gems of my
collection, the headstone sculpture of "The Good Samaritan."

[Illustration: FIG. 76. WALTHAMSTOW.]

[Illustration: FIG. 77. BROXBOURNE.]

FIG. 78.--AT STAPLEFORD TAWNEY.

"To Richard Wright, died 3d March 1781,
aged 76 years."

I have, however, an earlier study of the same subject from the
churchyard at Shorne Village, near Gravesend, which, is here given
for comparison, and I have seen two others at Cranbrook. They all have
some features alike, but there are differences in the treatment of