no of roofs as in most english villages however small but is merely an ancient of farm houses spacious and standing wide apart each within its own and offering a most comfortable aspect of and all manner of rural plenty it seemed to be a community of old among whom everything had been going on since an epoch beyond the memory of man and they kept a certain privacy among themselves and dwelt on a cross road at the entrance of which was � old a barred gate open bnt still me with a sense of scarcely intrusion after all in some shady nook of those gentle slopes there may have been a and more settlement which i never reached emerging from the by road and entering upon one that crossed it at right angles and led to i the church of dr like the others which i have described it had a low stone tower square and at its summit for all these little churches seem to have been built on the same model and nearly at the same and have even a greater family likeness than the as i approached the bell of the tower a remarkably deep toned bell considering how small it was flung its voice abroad and told me that it was noon the church stands among its graves a little removed from the quite apart from any collection of houses and with no signs of a it is a good deal by trees and not wholly destitute of ivy the body of the edifice unfortunately and it is an outrage which the english are fond of has been newly covered with a plaster or wash so as quite to destroy the aspect of antiquity except upon the tower which wears the dark gray hue of many centuries the window is painted with a representation of christ upon the cross and all the other windows are full of painted or stained glass bnt 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 that should be the inheritance of this branch of art revived from 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 coloured panes like a show of common place objects under the fantastic influence of a dream for the floor was covered with modem very like what we may see in a new england meeting house though i think a little more favourable than those would be to the quiet of the and their families those who slept under dr s preaching now their nap i suppose in the churchyard 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 that this enormous scholar great in the classic tongues and inevitably his own simplest into a learned language should have been set up in this 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 the first that i beheld were quite as familiar to me when fresh from home as the old wooden meeting house in which used on wintry to be the frozen 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 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 had given me pretty accurate of the common objects of english scenery and these being long ago by a youthful fancy had taken their places among the images of things actually seen yet the illusion was often so powerful that i almost doubted whether such airy might not be a sort of innate the print of a recollection in some mind with and fainter impress through several to my own i felt indeed like the in person returning to the haunts after more than two hundred years and finding the church the hall the farm house the cottage hardly changed during his long absence � the same shady by paths and hedge lanes the same veiled sky and green lustre of the and fields � old home while his own for these things a little obscured by were at every step an american is not very apt to love the english people as a whole on whatever length of acquaintance i fancy that they would value our regard and even it in their way if we could give it to them in spite of all but they are beset by a curious and inevitable which them as it were to keep up what they seem to consider a wholesome bitterness of feeling between themselves and all other especially that of america they will never confess it nevertheless it is as essential a to them as their bitter ale therefore � and possibly too from a similar in his own character � an american seldom feels quite as if he were at home among the english people if he do so he has ceased to be an american but it requires no long residence to make him love their island and appreciate it as thoroughly as they themselves do for my part i used to wish that we could it their thirty millions of inhabitants to some convenient wilderness in the great 