Its breath from side to side above the bench |
The poet-beadle's brains, you may think, were graduated by the same scale as St. Lawrence's Church. However, I assure you he was quite the beau-ideal of an old beadle, and he did his ciceroni work well, showing us where his lordship sat (Lord Yarborough, in whose gift is the rectorship), and where sat the butler, and my lady's maid, and the parish officers. All these privileged people, who dwell in the atmosphere of nobility, had, to the old beadle's senses, something sweeter than the odour of sanctity. For the rest of St Lawrence's audience, I fear they do not fare as well as the people in Doctor Franklin's dream, who, upon confessing to St Peter at the gate of Heaven that they were neither Baptists nor Methodists, nor of any particular sect, were bidden come in and take the best seats they could find!
Among the epitaphs I read on the mouldering stones in St. Lawrence's churchyard, was one that pleased me for its quaint old ballad style. It was a husband's on his wife, beginning
"Meek and gentle were her spirit, |
