The bell of the old church was ringing as we went along, and many
respectable-looking people and cleanly dressed children were moving
towards the sound. Soon we reached the church, and I have seen nothing
yet in England that so completely answered my idea of what such a thing
was, as this old village church of Bebbington.

It is quite a large edifice, built in the form of a cross, a low peaked
porch in the side, over which, rudely cut in stone, is the date 1300 and
something. The steeple has ivy on it, and looks old, old, old; so does
the whole church, though portions of it have been renewed, but not so as
to impair the aspect of heavy, substantial endurance, and long, long
decay, which may go on hundreds of years longer before the church is a
ruin. There it stands, among the surrounding graves, looking just the
same as it did in Bloody Mary's days; just as it did in Cromwell's time.
A bird (and perhaps many birds) had its nest in the steeple, and flew in
and out of the loopholes that were opened into it. The stone framework
of the windows looked particularly old.

There were monuments about the church, some lying flat on the ground,
others elevated on low pillars, or on cross slabs of stone, and almost
all looking dark, moss-grown, and very antique. But on reading some of
the inscriptions, I was surprised to find them very recent; for, in fact,
twenty years of this climate suffices to give as much or more antiquity
of aspect, whether to gravestone or edifice, than a hundred years of our
own,--so soon do lichens creep over the surface, so soon does it blacken,
so soon do the edges lose their sharpness, so soon does Time gnaw away
the records. The only really old monuments (and those not very old) were
two, standing close together, and raised on low rude arches, the dates on
which were 1684 and 1686. On one a cross was rudely cut into the stone.
But there may have been hundreds older than this, the records on which