the finest old English village I have seen, with many antique houses, and
with altogether a rural and picturesque aspect, unlike anything in
America, and yet possessing a familiar look, as if it were something I
had dreamed about. There were thatched stone cottages intermixed with
houses of a better kind, and likewise a gateway and gravelled walk, that
perhaps gave admittance to the Squire's mansion. It was not merely one
long, wide street, as in most New England villages, but there were
several crooked ways, gathering the whole settlement into a pretty small
compass. In the midst of it stood a venerable church of the common red
freestone, with a most reverend air, considerably smaller than that of
Bebbington, but more beautiful, and looking quite as old. There was ivy
on its spire and elsewhere. It looked very quiet and peaceful, and as if
it had received the people into its low arched door every Sabbath for
many centuries. There were many tombstones about it, some level with the
ground, some raised on blocks of stone, on low pillars, moss-grown and
weather-worn; and probably these were but the successors of other stones
that had quite crumbled away, or been buried by the accumulation of dead
men's dust above them. In the centre of the churchyard stood an old
yew-tree, with immense trunk, which was all decayed within, so that it is
a wonder how the tree retains any life,--which, nevertheless, it does.
It was called "the old Yew of Eastham," six hundred years ago!

After passing through the churchyard, we saw the village inn on the other
side. The doors were fastened, but a girl peeped out of the window at
us, and let us in, ushering us into a very neat parlor. There was a
cheerful fire in the grate, a straw carpet on the floor, a mahogany
sideboard, and a mahogany table in the middle of the room; and, on the
walls, the portraits of mine host (no doubt) and of his wife and
daughters,--a very nice parlor, and looking like what I might have found
in a country tavern at home, only this was an ancient house, and there is