to a monastery, but the monks were all gone. Over the door
there was stone work, representing saints and bishops, and here and
there, along the sides of the church, there were figures of men's
heads, made in a strange grotesque way: I have since seen the same
sort of figures in the round tower of the Temple church in London. My
father said they were very improper ornaments for such a place, and
so I now think them; but it seems the people who built these great
churches in old times, gave themselves more liberties than they do
now; and I remember that when I first saw them, and before my father
had made this observation, though they were so ugly and out of shape,
and some of them seemed to be grinning and distorting their features
with pain or with laughter, yet being placed upon a church, to which
I had come with such serious thoughts, I could not help thinking
they had some serious meaning; and I looked at them with wonder, but
without any temptation to laugh. I somehow fancied they were the
representation of wicked people set up as a warning.

When we got into the church, the service was not begun, and my father
kindly took me round, to shew me the monuments and every thing else
remarkable. I remember seeing one of a venerable figure, which my
father said had been a judge. The figure was kneeling, as if it was
alive, before a sort of desk, with a book, I suppose the Bible, lying
on it. I somehow fancied the figure had a sort of life in it, it
seemed so natural, or that the dead judge that it was done for, said
his prayers at it still. This was a silly notion, but I was very
young, and had passed my little life in a remote place, where I had
never seen any thing nor knew any thing; and the awe which I felt at
first being in a church, took from me all power but that of wondering.
I did not reason about any thing, I was too young. Now I understand
why monuments are put up for the dead, and why the figures which
are upon them, are described as doing the actions which they did in
their life-times, and that they are a sort of pictures set up for our
instruction. But all was new and surprising to me on that day; the
long windows with little panes, the pillars, the pews made of oak, the
little hassocks for the people to kneel on, the form of the pulpit
with the sounding-board over it, gracefully carved in flower work. To
you, who have lived all your lives in populous places, and have been
taken to church from the earliest tim