pervious to the wet, and yet strangely picturesque, and correct too,
according to great rules of architecture. It was built with a nave
and aisles, visibly in the form of a cross, though with its arms
clipped down to the trunk, with a separate chancel, with a large
square short tower, and with a bell-shaped spire, covered with lead
and irregular in its proportions. Who does not know the low porch,
the perpendicular Gothic window, the flat-roofed aisles, and the
noble old grey tower of such a church as this? As regards its
interior, it was dusty; it was blocked up with high-backed ugly pews;
the gallery in which the children sat at the end of the church, and
in which two ancient musicians blew their bassoons, was all awry,
and looked as though it would fall; the pulpit was an ugly useless
edifice, as high nearly as the roof would allow, and the reading-desk
under it hardly permitted the parson to keep his head free from the
dangling tassels of the cushion above him. A clerk also was there
beneath him, holding a third position somewhat elevated; and upon
the whole things there were not quite as I would have had them. But,
nevertheless, the place looked like a church, and I can hardly say
so much for all the modern edifices which have been built in my days
towards the glory of God. It looked like a church, and not the less
so because in walking up the passage between the pews the visitor
trod upon the brass plates which dignified the resting-places of the
departed Dales of old.

Below the church, and between that and the village, stood the
vicarage, in such position that the small garden of the vicarage
stretched from the churchyard down to the backs of the village
cottages. This was a pleasant residence, newly built within the last
thirty years, and creditable to the ideas of comfort entertained by
the rich collegiate body from which the vicars of Allington always