tury; rebuilt in 1581, and dedicated to St. John; rebuilt in
1770; enlarged, elaborated, and rejuvenised in 1853; plagued with
dry rot for a considerable time afterwards; in a pretty good state
of architectural health now; and likely to last out both this
generation and the next. It looks rather genteel and stately
outside; it has a good steeple, kept duly alive by a congregation of
traditional jackdaws; it has a capital set of bells which have put
in a good deal of overtime during the past five months, through a
pressure of election business; and in its entirety, as Baines once
remarked, the building looks like "a good ordinary Parish Church."
There is nothing either snobbish or sublime about it; and, speaking
after Josh Billings, "it's a fair even-going critter," capable of
being either pulled down or made bigger. That is about the length
and breadth of the matter, and if we had to appeal to the
commonwealth as to the correctness of our position it would be found
that the "ayes have it." We don't believe in the Parish Church; but
a good deal of people do, and why shouldn't they have their way in a
small fight as well as the rest of folk? All, except Mormons and
Fenians, who honestly believe in anything, are entitled to respect.

Our Parish Church has a good contour, and many of its exterior
architectural details are well conceived and arranged; but, like
other buildings of the same order, it has got a multiplicity of
strange hobgoblin figure-heads about it which serve no purpose
either earthly or heavenly, and which are understood by hardly one
out of five million. We could never yet make it out why those
grotesque pieces of masonry--gargoyles, we believe, they are called-
-were fixed to any place of worship. Around our Parish Church and
half-way up the steeple, there are, at almost every angle and
prominence, rudely carved monstrosities, conspicuous for nothing but
their ineffable and heathenish ugliness. Huge eyes, great mouths,
immense tooth, savage faces and distorted bodies are their prime
characteristics. The man who invented this species of ecclesiastical
decoration must have been either mad or in "the horrors." An evenly
balanced mind could never have thought of them, and why they should
he specially tacked to churches is a mystery in accordance with
neither King Solomon nor Cocker. The graveyard of our Parish Church
is, we dare say, something which very few people think of. We have
seen many such places in o