on the dilapidations which time is making on a building, which all who live around it have learnt to look at with reverence and affection. So true it is! Indeed I never speak to one of the humble occupiers of the neighbouring cottages, without hearing expressions of regret that this interesting church should be allowed to fall into ruin. Let us hope that some kindly hands will be stretched out for its restoration.

And who can visit the spot I have attempted to describe without thinking of the elegant and accomplished Gray? Every thing connected with him is full of interest, and even if the ivy-covered tower before me, with the vast stem of the luxuriant plant measuring full three feet across, should be supposititious, which may yet be doubted, still it helps to remind me of the poet. In the neighbourhood he lived, and in the neighbourhood he was educated and wrote his pleasing and popular elegy. Who can read it without agreeing with our great moralist, Dr. Johnson, that "it abounds with images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo." Yes-it must be the ivy mantled tower of Gray, and I trust that no cold-hearted casuist will ever be able to prove the contrary.

But let us enter the church, and what a sight presents itself! The piles of rubbish-the fallen plaster, the stones half removed from their former

resting places, all shew the ruin of the place. The windows are broken, the old stained glass from one of them has been stolen, one antient brass still remains on the venerable tomb to which it was affixed, shewing the antiquity of the family of which it is a record, while others have been removed, as may be seen by the outlines of their hollowed recesses on the damp and decaying

stones.

But what do I see on that small and crumbling reading desk, the only moveable relic which the economical churchwardens have left to shew where the village pastor read his lessons of instruction! It is, or rather was, a prayer-book, but now torn, mouldy, and worm-eaten. It was open at the service for the burial of the dead, and the good old clerk who accompanied me said, that it was still used when a funeral took place of any one who had expressed a wish that his ashes should repose " in this neglected spot," with those of his ancestors. And what a picture must a funeral present, in this place of ruin and desolation! The mourners enter, while the coffin has been deposited under the beautiful groined roof of the chancel, for beautiful it is, and its exquisite workmanship has defied the power of time to injure it. The wind murmurs through the glassless windows, while a branch of ivy which has lost its hold on the stony wall, intrudes itself through the openings, and waves mournfully over head.

The clergyman steps upon the creaking reading desk-the service begins-"I am the resurrection and the life."-There are the sobs of the mourners -the black pall concealing the coffin, the gloom and desolation around, all reminding one of decay and disease and death. Here no "swelling notes of praise" are now heard, no "pealing anthem" ascends to heaven, but "man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live-ashes to ashes." Even the monitory texts of scripture on the once whitewashed walls are covered with a greenish tinge from damp, and are nearly obliterated. They are no longer of use to "teach the rustic moralist how to die." One or two "frail memorials, with uncouth rhymes," of those who "kept the noiseless tenor of their way," still remain in the church. Yet there is one fair monument fresh, and unmutilated, and who can see it, and read the pleasing and elegant inscription on it without the deepest interest. It is erected to the memory of one whose scientific researches did so much honour to his country and himself as a philosopher, and whose amiable disposition made him beloved by the poor of his own neighbourhood, and by the rich in all countries. It is the monument of the late Sir William Herschell. Here he worshipped that Great Being whose works he loved to contemplate, when he "surveyed the heavens, the work of His fingers, the moon and