, regret for your vanished charm, and the fragrance of your soft
bloom, and sadness for all sweet things that fade.

The manor, so I learn, was burnt wantonly by the Roundheads--there was
a battle hereabouts--on the charge that it had harboured some followers
of the king; and so our dreams of greatness and permanence are
fulfilled.

The whole church was very neat and spruce; it had suffered a
restoration lately. The walls were stripped of their old plaster and
pointed, so that the inside is now rougher than the outside, a thing
the ancient builders never intended. The altar is fairly draped with
good hangings behind, and the chancel fitted with new oak stalls and
seats, all as neat as a new pin. As I lingered in the church, reading
the simple monuments, a rosy, burly vicar came briskly in, and seeing
me there, courteously showed me all the treasures of his house, like
Hezekiah. He took me into the belfry, and there, piled up against the
wall, were some splendid Georgian columns and architraves, richly
carved in dark brown wood. I asked what it was. "Oh, a horrible pompous
thing," he said; "it was behind the altar--most pagan and unsuitable;
we had it all out as soon as I came. The first moment I entered the
church, I said to myself, 'THAT must go,' and I have succeeded, though
it was hard enough to collect the money, and actually some of the old
people here objected." I did not feel it was worth while to cast cold
water on the good man's satisfaction--but the pity of it! I do not
suppose that a couple of thousand pounds could have reproduced it; and
it is simply heart-rending to see such a noble monument of piety and
careful love sacrificed to a wave of so-called ecclesiastical taste.
The vicar's chief pride was a new window, by a fashionable modern firm;
quite unobjectionable in design, and with good colour, but desperately
uninteresting. It represented some mild, unemphatic, attenuated saints,
all exactly alike, languidly and decorously conversing together,
weighed down by heavy drapery, as though wrapped in bales of carpets.
In the lower compartments knelt some dignified persons, similarly
habited, in face exactly like the saints above, except that they were
fitted out with unaccountable beards--all pretty and correct, but with
no character or force. I suppose that fifty years hence, when our taste
has broadened somewhat, this window will probably be condemned as
impossible too. There can be no absolute canon of bea