or dresser, and their encircling farm-buildings and meadows, in
favor of an upgrowth of new trim mansions designed to meet the
needs, not of peasants, but of gentlefolks.

And naturally the churches too have shared in the process of
transformation. The ecclesiastical revival of the last half-century
has worried its will even in the remotest corners of the Cambrian
country, and soon not a vestige of the homely worshipping-places
of an earlier day will remain. Across the road, in front of the
Long Whindale parsonage, for instance, rose a freshly built church,
also peaked and gabled, with a spire and two bells and a painted
east window, and Heaven knows what novelties besides. The primitive
whitewashed structure it replaced had lasted long, and in the course
of many generations time had clothed its moss-grown walls, its
slated porch, and tombstones worn with rain in a certain beauty of
congruity and association, linking it with the purple distances of
the fells, and the brawling river bending round the gray enclosure.
But finally, after a period of quiet and gradual decay, the ruin
of Long Whindale chapel had become a quick and hurrying ruin that
would not be arrested. When the rotten timbers of the roof came
dropping on the farmers heads, and the oak benches beneath offered
gaps, the geography of which had to be carefully learnt by the
substantial persons who sat on them, lest they should be overtaken
by undignified disaster; when the rain poured in on the Communion
Table and the wind raged through innumerable mortarless chinks,
even the slowly-moving folk of the valley came to the conclusion
that 'summat 'ull hev to be deun.' And by the help of the Bishop
and Queen Anne's Bounty, and what not, aided by just as many
half-crowns as the valley found itself unable to defend against the
encroachments of a new and 'moiderin' parson, 'summat' was done,