ry. Hall spent the last melancholy years of
his life in the little village of Heigham, where the Dolphin Inn, with
its quaint flint-work frontage, mullioned windows, and curiously carved
chamber roof and door, yet remain to associate the spot with his memory:
his tomb is in the little village church close by.

In the centre of the roof of the nave is a circular hole, the purpose of
which for many years puzzled enquirers; but one of the industrious and
intellectual archaeologians of the present day, to whom we are indebted
for many interesting discoveries connected with the cathedral, has
reasonably suggested that it was the spot from whence was suspended the
large censer swung lengthwise in the nave at the festivals of Easter and
Whitsuntide. On the north side of the choir there still exists the small
oriel window, through which the sepulchre was watched from Good Friday to
Easter Morning. This ceremony consisted of placing the host in a
sepulchre, erected to represent the holy sepulchre, covering it with
crape, and setting a person or persons to watch it until Easter Sunday,
as the soldiers watched the tomb of Christ. During the time, no bells
sounded, no music was heard, and lights were extinguished. In silence
and gloom these three days were passed. In reference to the length of
time usually so denominated, that is from Friday to Sunday, a curious
solution, attributed to Christopher Wren, the son of the architect, has
recently been published; he seems to have puzzled himself over such like
problems, and says, "that the night in one hemisphere was day in the
other, and the two days in the other were nights in the opposite," so
that in reality there were three nights and three days on _the earth_;
and as Christ died for the whole world, not only for the hemisphere in
which Judea was, he therefore truly remained in the grave that time.

It is difficult for us, accustomed to the sober undemonstrative, not to
say cold demeanour of modern Protestantism, to form a conception of the
effect of the seasons of festivity or humiliation, as observed even in
our own land in earlier times. The setting apart the greater portion of
the day for weeks together, for religious ceremonies, and especially the
almost dramatic scenes of the Passion week, sound to our ears as tales of
mummery. Whether we have gained much by the acquisition of the wisdom
that sees nothing in them but occasion for ridicule, or pity, may be a
question.