ars, however, the few remaining survivors of
this primitive clerical order in the Westmoreland and Cumberland valleys
have dropped into their quiet, unremembered graves, and new men of other
ways and other modes of speech reign in their stead. And as at Long
Whindale, so almost everywhere, the change has been emphasized by the
disappearance of the old parsonage houses with their stone floors,
their parlors lustrous with oak carving on chest or dresser, and their
encircling farm-buildings and meadows, in favor of an upgrowth of
new trim mansions designed to meet the needs, not of peasants, but of
gentlefolks.

And naturally the churches too have shared in the process of
transformation. The ecclesiastical revival of the last half-century has
worried its will even in the remotest corners of the Cambrian country,
and soon not a vestige of the homely worshipping-places of an earlier
day will remain. Across the road, in front of the Long Whindale
parsonage, for instance, rose a freshly built church, also peaked and
gabled, with a spire and two bells and a painted east window, and Heaven
knows what novelties besides. The primitive whitewashed structure it
replaced had lasted long, and in the course of many generations time had
clothed its moss-grown walls, its slated porch, and tombstones worn with
rain in a certain beauty of congruity and association, linking it with
the purple distances of the fells, and the brawling river bending round
the gray enclosure. But finally, after a period of quiet and gradual
decay, the ruin of Long Whindale chapel had become a quick and hurrying
ruin that would not be arrested. When the rotten timbers of the roof
came dropping on the farmers heads, and the oak benches beneath
offered gaps, the geography of which had to be carefully learnt by the
substantial persons who sat on them, lest they should be overtaken by
undignified disaster; when the rain poured in on the Communion Table
and the wind raged through innumerable mortarless chinks, even the
slowly-moving folk of the valley came to the conclusion that 'summat
'ull hev to be deun.' And by the help of the Bishop and Queen Anne's
Bounty, and what not, aided by just as many half-crowns as the valley
found itself unable to defend against the encroachments of a new and
'moiderin' parson, 'summat' was done, whereof the results--namely, the
new church, vicarage, and school-house--were now conspicuous.

This radical change, however, had not been t