otes to tell to each other of
remarkable boys, incidents, and adventures, which had made a noise in
their day in that small town. These two persons were induced afterwards
to settle at Rydal, where they both died.

_Church and Churchyard_.--The church, as already noticed, is that of
Grasmere. The interior of it has been improved lately and made warmer by
underdrawing the roof, and raising the floor; but the rude and antique
majesty of its former appearance has been impaired by painting the
rafters; and the oak benches, with a simple rail at the back dividing
them from each other, have given way to seats that have more the
appearance of pews. It is remarkable that, excepting only the pew
belonging to Rydal Hall, that to Rydal Mount, the one to the parsonage,
and, I believe, another, the men and women still continue, as used to be
the custom in Wales, to sit separate from each other. Is this practice
as old as the Reformation? and when and how did it originate? In the
Jewish synagogues, and in Lady Huntingdon's chapels, the sexes are
divided in the same way. In the adjoining churchyard greater changes
have taken place; it is now not a little crowded with tombstones; and
near the schoolhouse, which stands in the churchyard, is an ugly
structure, built to receive the hearse, which is recently come into use.
It would not be worth while to allude to this building, or the
hearse-vehicle it contains, but that the latter has been the means of
introducing a change much to be lamented in the mode of conducting
funerals among the mountains. Now, the coffin is lodged in the hearse at
the door of the house of the deceased, and the corpse is so conveyed to
the churchyard gate. All the solemnity which formerly attended its
progress, as described in this poem, is put an end to. So much do I
regret this, that I beg to be excused for giving utterance here to a
wish that, should it befall me to die at Rydal Mount, my own body may be
carried to Grasmere Church after the manner in which, till lately, that
of every one was borne to the place of sepulchre here, namely, on the
shoulders of neighbours; no house being passed without some words of a
funeral psalm being sung at the time by the attendants bearing it. When
I put into the mouth of the 'Wanderer,' 'Many precious rites and customs
of our rural ancestry are gone, or stealing from us,' 'this, I hope,
will last for ever,' and what follows, little did I foresee that the
observance and mode