The pew is one of those occupying the centre of the church,
and is just across the aisle from the pulpit, and is the best of all for
the purpose of seeing and hearing the clergyman, and likewise as
convenient as any, from its neighborhood to the altar. On the other side
of the aisle, beneath the pulpit, is Lady Fleming's pew. This and one or
two others are curtained, Wordsworth's was not. I think I can bring up
his image in that corner seat of his pew--a white-headed, tall, spare
man, plain in aspect--better than in any other situation. The woman said
that she had known him very well, and that he had made some verses on a
sister of hers. She repeated the first lines, something about a lamb,
but neither S----- nor I remembered them.
On the walls of the chancel there are monuments to the Flemings, and
painted escutcheons of their arms; and along the side walls also, and on
the square pillars of the row of arches, there are other monuments,
generally of white marble, with the letters of the inscription blackened.
On these pillars, likewise, and in many places in the walls, were hung
verses from Scripture, painted on boards. At one of the doors was a
poor-box,--an elaborately carved little box, of oak, with the date 1648,
and the name of the church--St. Oswald's--upon it. The whole interior of
the edifice was plain, simple, almost to grimness,--or would have been
so, only that the foolish church-wardens, or other authority, have washed
it over with the same buff color with which they have overlaid the
exterior.
Pages:
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246