ed in the fifteenth century, and the Harington Chantry, which now
contains the tomb of Baron Harington and his wife, was added, and the
present spire, in place of the old one, which was blown down in a gale.
It is a little, quiet, grey English church, set peacefully in its green
churchyard, shaded by a huge ancient yew, perhaps as old as itself. In
the winter rain and wind beat round its solid grey walls, in spring the
daffodils bloom in the churchyard, and on summer days the bees are busy
among the clover and daisies over the graves. There are thousands of
such small, sober, beautiful churches in England; they are the monument
on which a fragment of the history of the race is inscribed; they are
the nucleus of the village life; the beginning and the end of its
activities have their sanction within its walls; they are rich with the
continued service of men's lives, generation from generation taking up
the duty and its privilege; they rise above the clustering roofs of the
village, tower or spire, as the visible landmark of faith--not of a
creed that can change and ebb and flow, but of a faith in the spiritual
core that lies at the heart of material life, like the village church
among the homes of its village.

We who pass casually, and pause, and step in and look, with a curious
and antiquarian eye, for a bit of old brasswork or carved screen, miss
the intimate beauty of these churches as much, perhaps, as if we read
them in a catalogue: "St. Dubric; 12th cent.; fine marble monument of
15th cent. . . ., and so on." The plainest and simplest holds within
its whitewashed walls the beauty of continuous tradition; you must see
it in all its aspects of daylight and evening light, summer and winter,
the rainy, tumultuous November afternoons and the long, golden, mellow
evenings of June, to realize what it offers, of peace and order,
tenderness and calm.

Inside Porlock Church, which is light and white and simple, there is a
beautiful canopied tomb of the fifteenth century, with the recumbent
figures of Baron Harington and his wife Elizabeth Courteny, carved in
alabaster. Whoever made these marble figures was an artist; not only
is the detail of the dress intricately and beautifully carved, the
foliated wreath of his helmet, the elaborate decoration of her girdle,
and the curved "horns" of her head-dress rolled either side of her
face, but the whole pose and outline of the figures is firm and
gracious.

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