which Sylvia had been so looking forward, to scale the long flights
of stone steps--worn by the feet of many generations--which led up
to the parish church, placed on a height above the town, on a great
green area at the summit of the cliff, which was the angle where the
river and the sea met, and so overlooking both the busy crowded
little town, the port, the shipping, and the bar on the one hand,
and the wide illimitable tranquil sea on the other--types of life
and eternity. It was a good situation for that church.
Homeward-bound sailors caught sight of the tower of St Nicholas, the
first land object of all. They who went forth upon the great deep
might carry solemn thoughts with them of the words they had heard
there; not conscious thoughts, perhaps--rather a distinct if dim
conviction that buying and selling, eating and marrying, even life
and death, were not all the realities in existence. Nor were the
words that came up to their remembrance words of sermons preached
there, however impressive. The sailors mostly slept through the
sermons; unless, indeed, there were incidents such as were involved
in what were called 'funeral discourses' to be narrated. They did
not recognize their daily faults or temptations under the grand
aliases befitting their appearance from a preacher's mouth. But they
knew the old, oft-repeated words praying for deliverance from the
familiar dangers of lightning and tempest; from battle, murder, and
sudden death; and nearly every man was aware that he left behind him
some one who would watch for the prayer for the preservation of
those who travel by land or by water, and think of him, as
God-protected the more for the earnestness of the response then
given.

There, too, lay the dead of many generations; for St. Nicholas had
been the parish church ever since Monkshaven was a town, and the