with a representation of Christ upon the
Cross, and all the other windows are full of painted or stained glass,
but none of it ancient, nor (if it be fair to judge from without of what
ought to be seen within) possessing any of the tender glory that should
be the inheritance of this branch of Art, revived from mediaeval times.
I stepped over the graves, and peeped in at two or three of the windows,
and saw the snug interior of the church glimmering through the
many-colored panes, like a show of commonplace objects under the
fantastic influence of a dream: for the floor was covered with modern
pews, very like what we may see in a New-England meeting-house, though,
I think, a little more favorable than those would be to the quiet
slumbers of the Hatton farmers and their families. Those who slept under
Doctor Parr's preaching now prolong their nap, I suppose, in the
church-yard round about, and can scarcely have drawn much spiritual
benefit from any truths that he contrived to tell them in their
lifetime. It struck me as a rare example (even where examples are
numerous) of a man utterly misplaced, that this enormous scholar, great
in the classic tongues, and inevitably converting his own simplest
vernacular into a learned language, should have been set up in this
homely pulpit, and ordained to preach salvation to a rustic audience, to
whom it is difficult to imagine how he could ever have spoken one
available word.

Almost always, in visiting such scenes as I have been attempting to
describe, I had a singular sense of having been there before. The
ivy-grown English churches (even that of Bebbington, the first that I
beheld) were quite as familiar to me, when fresh from home, as the old
wooden meeting-house in Salem, which used, on wintry Sabbaths, to be the
frozen purgatory of my childhood. This was a bewildering, yet very
delightful emotion, fluttering about me like a faint summer-wind, and
filling my imagination with a thousand half-remembrances, which looked
as vivid as sunshine, at a side-glance, but faded quite away whenever I
attempted to grasp and define them. Of course, the explanation of the
mystery was, that history, poetry, and fiction, books of travel, and the
talk of tourists, had given me pretty accurate preconceptions of the
common objects of English scenery, and these, being long ago vivified by
a youthful fancy, had insensibly taken their places among the images of
things actually seen. Yet the illusion wa