the fields and moors that lie beyond. The area of this oblong is filled
up by a crowded churchyard, and a small garden or court in front of the
clergyman's house. As the entrance to this from the road is at the side,
the path goes round the corner into the little plot of ground. Underneath
the windows is a narrow flower-border, carefully tended in days of yore,
although only the most hardy plants could be made to grow there. Within
the stone wall, which keeps out the surrounding churchyard, are bushes of
elder and lilac; the rest of the ground is occupied by a square grass-
plot and a gravel walk. The house is of grey stone, two stories high,
heavily roofed with flags, in order to resist the winds that might strip
off a lighter covering. It appears to have been built about a hundred
years ago, and to consist of four rooms on each story; the two windows on
the right (as the visitor stands with his back to the church, ready to
enter in at the front door) belonging to Mr. Bronte's study, the two on
the left to the family sitting-room. Everything about the place tells of
the most dainty order, the most exquisite cleanliness. The door-steps
are spotless; the small old-fashioned window-panes glitter like looking-
glass. Inside and outside of that house cleanliness goes up into its
essence, purity.

The little church lies, as I mentioned, above most of the houses in the
village; and the graveyard rises above the church, and is terribly full
of upright tombstones. The chapel or church claims greater antiquity
than any other in that part of the kingdom; but there is no appearance of
this in the external aspect of the present edifice, unless it be in the
two eastern windows, which remain unmodernized, and in the lower part of
the steeple. Inside, the character of the pillars shows that they were
constructed before the reign of Henry VII. It is probable that there
existed on this ground, a "field-kirk," or oratory, in the earliest
times; and, from the Archbishop's registry at York, it is ascertained