g volunteers gave one to
their Colonel, the old Sir Francis Clavering; and the stables which
once held a great part of that brilliant, but defunct regiment, are now
cheerless and empty, except on Thursdays, when the farmers put up there,
and their tilted carts and gigs make a feeble show of liveliness in the
place, or on Petty Sessions, when the magistrates attend in what used to
be the old card-room.

On the south side of the market rises up the church, with its great grey
towers, of which the sun illuminates the delicate carving; deepening the
shadows of the huge buttresses, and gilding the glittering windows and
flaming vanes. The image of the Patroness of the Church was wrenched out
of the porch centuries ago: such of the statues of saints as were within
reach of stones and hammer at that period of pious demolition, are
maimed and headless, and of those who were out of fire, only Doctor
Portman knows the names and history, for his curate, Smirke, is not
much of an antiquarian, and Mr. Simcoe (husband of the Honourable Mrs.
Simcoe), incumbent and architect of the Chapel of Ease in the lower
town, thinks them the abomination of desolation.

The Rectory is a stout broad-shouldered brick house, of the reign of
Anne. It communicates with the church and market by different gates, and
stands at the opening of Yew-tree Lane, where the Grammar School
(Rev. ---- Wapshot) is; Yew-tree Cottage (Miss Flather); the butchers'
slaughtering-house, an old barn or brew-house of the Abbey times, and
the Misses Finucane's establishment for young ladies. The two schools
had their pews in the loft on each side of the organ, until the
Abbey Church getting rather empty, through the falling-off of the
congregation, who were inveigled to the Heresy-shop in the lower town,
the Doctor induced the Misses Finucane to bring their pretty little
flock downstairs; and the young ladies' bonnets make a tolerable show
in the rather vacant aisles. Nobody is in the great pew of the Clavering
family, except the statues of defunct baronets and their ladies: there
is Sir Poyntz Clavering, Knight and Baronet, kneeling in a square
beard opposite his wife in a ruff: a very fat lady, the Dame Rebecca
Clavering, in alto-relievo, is borne up to Heaven by two little
blue-veined angels, who seem to have a severe task--and so forth. How
well in after life Pen remembered those effigies, and how often in youth
he scanned them as the Doctor was grumbling the sermon fro