learning, and unlearning in my sleep. Years had rolled away whilst
I had been asleep--ripe fruit had fallen, green fruit had come on
whilst I had been asleep--how circumstances had altered, and above
all myself, whilst I had been asleep. No, I had not been asleep in
the old church! I was in a pew, it is true, but not the pew of
black leather, in which I sometimes fell asleep in days of yore,
but in a strange pew; and then my companions, they were no longer
those of days of yore. I was no longer with my respectable father
and mother, and my dear brother, but with the gypsy cral and his
wife, and the gigantic Tawno, the Antinous of the dusky people.
And what was I myself? No longer an innocent child, but a moody
man, bearing in my face, as I knew well, the marks of my strivings
and strugglings, of what I had learnt and unlearnt; nevertheless,
the general aspect of things brought to my mind what I had felt and
seen of yore. There was difference enough, it is true, but still
there was a similarity--at least I thought so--the church, the
clergyman, and the clerk, differing in many respects from those of
pretty D---, put me strangely in mind of them; and then the words!-
-by the bye, was it not the magic of the words which brought the
dear enchanting past so powerfully before the mind of Lavengro? for
the words were the same sonorous words of high import which had
first made an impression on his childish ear in the old church of
pretty D---.

The liturgy was now over, during the reading of which my companions
behaved in a most unexceptionable manner, sitting down and rising
up when other people sat down and rose, and holding in their hands
prayer-books which they found in the pew, into which they stared
intently, though I observed that, with the exception of Mrs.
Petulengro, who knew how to read a little, they held the books by