it an inconvenient
situation. My father was in no very affluent circumstances, and it
was a sad necessity which he was put to, of having to go many miles
to fetch any thing he wanted from the nearest village, which was full
seven miles distant, through a sad miry way that at all times made it
heavy walking, and after rain was almost impassable. But he had no
horse or carriage of his own.

The church which belonged to the parish in which our house was
situated, stood in this village; and its distance being, as I said
before, seven miles from our house, made it quite an impossible thing
for my mother or me to think of going to it. Sometimes indeed, on a
fine dry Sunday, my father would rise early, and take a walk to the
village, just to see how _goodness thrived_, as he used to say, but
he would generally return tired, and the worse for his walk. It is
scarcely possible to explain to any one who has not lived in the fens,
what difficult and dangerous walking it is. A mile is as good as four,
I have heard my father say, in those parts. My mother, who in the
early part of her life had lived in a more civilised spot, and had
been used to constant churchgoing, would often lament her situation.
It was from her I early imbibed a great curiosity and anxiety to see
that thing, which I had heard her call a church, and so often lament
that she could never go to. I had seen houses of various structures,
and had seen in pictures the shapes of ships and boats, and palaces
and temples, but never rightly any thing that could be called a
church, or that could satisfy me about its form. Sometimes I thought
it must be like our house, and sometimes I fancied it must be more
like the house of our neighbour, Mr. Sutton, which was bigger and
handsomer than ours. Sometimes I thought it was a great hollow cave,
such as I have heard my father say the first inhabitants of the earth
dwelt in. Then I thought it was like a waggon, or a cart, and that it
must be something moveable. The shape of it ran in my mind strangely,
and one day I ventured to ask my mother, what was that foolish thing
that she was always longing to go to, and which she called a church.
Was it any thing to eat or drink, or was it only like a great huge
play-thing, to be seen and stared at?--I was not quite five years of
age when I made this inquiry.

This question, so oddly put, made my mother smile; but in a little
time she put on a more grave look, and informed me, that a ch