It was pleasant to see them there.
After examining the ruins, we went inside of the church, and found it a
dim and dusky old place, quite paved over with tombstones, not an inch of
space being left in the aisles or near the altar, or in any nook or
corner, uncovered by a tombstone. There were also mural monuments and
escutcheons, and close against the wall lay the mutilated statue of a
Crusader, with his legs crossed, in the style which one has so often read
about. The old fellow seemed to have been represented in chain armor;
but he had been more battered and bruised since death than even during
his pugnacious life, and his nose was almost knocked away. This figure
had been dug up many years ago, and nobody knows whom it was meant to
commemorate.
The nave of the church is supported by two rows of Saxon pillars, not
very lofty, but six feet six inches (so the sexton says) in diameter.
They are covered with plaster, which was laid on ages ago, and is now so
hard and smooth that I took the pillars to be really composed of solid
shafts of gray stone. But, at one end of the church, the plaster had
been removed from two of the pillars, in order to discover whether they
were still sound enough to support the building; and they prove to be
made of blocks of red freestone, just as sound as when it came from the
quarry; for though this stone soon crumbles in the open air, it is as
good as indestructible when sheltered from the weather.
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