he
neighbourhood. Mr Pontifex, they said was so clever; he had been senior
classic and senior wrangler; a perfect genius in fact, and yet with so
much sound practical common sense as well. As son of such a
distinguished man as the great Mr Pontifex the publisher he would come
into a large property by-and-by. Was there not an elder brother? Yes,
but there would be so much that Theobald would probably get something
very considerable. Of course they would give dinner parties. And Mrs
Pontifex, what a charming woman she was; she was certainly not exactly
pretty perhaps, but then she had such a sweet smile and her manner was so
bright and winning. She was so devoted too to her husband and her
husband to her; they really did come up to one's ideas of what lovers
used to be in days of old; it was rare to meet with such a pair in these
degenerate times; it was quite beautiful, etc., etc. Such were the
comments of the neighbours on the new arrivals.

As for Theobald's own parishioners, the farmers were civil and the
labourers and their wives obsequious. There was a little dissent, the
legacy of a careless predecessor, but as Mrs Theobald said proudly, "I
think Theobald may be trusted to deal with _that_." The church was then
an interesting specimen of late Norman, with some early English
additions. It was what in these days would be called in a very bad state
of repair, but forty or fifty years ago few churches were in good repair.
If there is one feature more characteristic of the present generation
than another it is that it has been a great restorer of churches.

Horace preached church restoration in his ode:--

Delicta majorum immeritus lues,
Romane, donec templa refeceris
Aedesque labentes deorum et
Foeda nigro simulacra fumo.

Nothing went right with Rome for long together after the Augustan age,
but whether it was because she did restore the temples or because she did
not restore them I know not. They certainly went all wrong after
Constantine's time and yet Rome is still a city of some importance.

I may say here that before Theobald had been many years at Battersby he
found scope for useful work in the rebuilding of Battersby church, which
he carried out at considerable cost, towards which he subscribed
liberally himself. He was his own architect, and this saved expense; but
architecture was not very well understood about the year 1834, when
Theobald commenced operations, and the