half-decayed trunks of former monarchs of the forest that filled its bed—a ditch covered with a superstratum of slimy, green water, lank weeds, and rank vegetation; and wherein, at flood time, urchin anglers could fish for eels and sticklebats, and, at ebb, the village ducks disport themselves and mudlarks play.

Along this fosse, the path continued. Further on, it widened into a broader way, which led you direct to the churchyard of Saint Canon’s. So studded is it with weatherworn tombstones, inclining at all angles like so many miniature leaning towers of Pisa, ivy-wreathed obelisks and quaintly-fashioned, railed-in monuments, that you can scarcely make out the lower buttresses of the ancient church that stands up from amongst their midst.

With its whitish-grey walls, time-stained and rain-eaten, its severe-looking, square Norman tower, and its generally-formal style of architecture, that edifice does not present a very imposing appearance from without; but, within, the case is different.

Lofty, pointed, stained-glass windows light it. The chancel bears the stamp of the Restoration. Oaken beams; carved galleries, curiously contrived to fit into every available space; high, upright box pews—of the sort instituted, in the reign of Anne, by the renowned Bishop Burnett to restrain the roving eyes of the congregation and make gallants better attend to their devotions; all these, in addition to the memorial slabs and tablets, and weeping angels over cinereal urns, tend to give the church that air of ugliness and comfort which the modern churchman detests.

Dear old church!

I love its old walls, its old chancel, its old pews, its form of worship, and all; for it was there that I first saw her,—my own, my darling!

O, Min, Min! can I ever forget that time?

Can I!

One Sunday—it is not so long ago that my hair is grey, nor so recently as to prevent my having a story to tell—I was in Saint Canon’s church, sitting in one of its old, square box pews, where one was, as it were, shut up in a small, private house, away from all connection with the outer world; for you could not see anything when the door was closed, with the exception of the roof overhead, and, mayhap, the walls around. I was listening to the varied fugue introitus that the organist was playing from the gallery beyond the pulpit,—playing with the full wind power of the venerable reed instrument he skilfully manipulated, having all the 

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