ing them back into oblivion. But here, in
silence, they pass again before the gaze. Let no man know for what
real purpose we come here; tell the aged clerk our business is with
brasses and inscriptions, press half a crown into his hand, and let
him pass to his potato-digging. There is one advantage at least in
the closing of the church on week-days, so much complained of--to
those who do visit it there is a certainty that their thoughts will
not be disturbed. And the sense of man's presence has departed from
the walls and oaken seats; the dust here is not the dust of the
highway, of the quick footstep; it is the dust of the past. The
ancient heavy key creaks in the cumbrous lock, and the iron
latch-ring has worn a deep groove in the solid stone. The narrow
nail-studded door of black oak yields slowly to the push--it is not
easy to enter, not easy to quit the present--but once close it, and
the living world is gone. The very style of ornament upon the door,
the broad-headed nails, has come down from the remotest antiquity.
After the battle, says the rude bard in the Saxon chronicle,

The Northmen departed
In their nailed barks,

and, earlier still, the treacherous troop that seized the sleeping
magician in iron, Wayland the Smith, were clad in 'nailed armour,'
in both instances meaning ornamented with nails. Incidentally, it
may be noted that, until very recently, at least one village church
in England had part of the skin of a Dane nailed to the door--a
stern reminder of the days when 'the Pagans' harried the land. This
narrow window, deep in the thick wall, has no painted magnificence
to boast of; but as you sit beside it in the square, high-sided pew,
it possesses a human interest which even art cannot supply.

The tall grass growing rank on the graves without rustles as it
waves to and fro in the wind against the small diamond panes, yellow
and green with age--rustles with a melancholy sound; for we know
that this window was once far above the ground, but the earth has
risen till nearly on a level--risen from the accumulation of human
remains. Yet, but a day or two before, on the Sunday morning, in
this pew, bright, restless children smiled at each other, exchanged
guilty pushes, while the sunbeams from the arrow-slit above shone
upon their golden hair.

Let us not think of this further, but dimly through the window, 'as
through a glass darkly,' see the green yew with its red berries, and
afar the elms