A Story of Long Descent

It was rudely borne in upon me that there was another side to the
shield. I was too much immersed in my own thoughts to note the peculiar
character of the small remote old-world town I came to in the
afternoon; next day was Sunday, and on my way to the church to attend
morning service, it struck me as one of the oldest-looking of the small
old towns I had stumbled upon in my rambles in this ancient land. There
was the wide vacant space where doubtless meetings had taken place for
a thousand years, and the steep narrow crooked medieval streets, and
here and there some stately building rising like a castle above the
humble cottage houses clustering round it as if for protection. Best of
all was the church with its noble tower where a peal of big bells were
just now flooding the whole place with their glorious noise.

It was even better when, inside, I rose from my knees and looked about
me, to find myself in an ideal interior, the kind I love best; rich in
metal and glass and old carved wood, the ornaments which the good
Methody would scornfully put in the hay and stubble category, but which
owing to long use and associations have acquired for others a symbolic
and spiritual significance. The beauty and richness were all the
fresher for the dimness, and the light was dim because it filtered
through old oxydised stained glass of that unparalleled loveliness of
colour which time alone can impart. It was, excepting in vastness, like
a cathedral interior, and in some ways better than even the best of
these great fanes, wonderful as they are. Here, recalling them, one
could venture to criticise and name their several deficits:--a Wells
divided, a ponderous Ely, a vacant and cold Canterbury, a too light and
airy Salisbury, and so on even to Exeter, supreme in beauty, spoilt by
a monstrous organ in the wrong place. That wood and metal giant,
standing as a stone bridge to mock the eyes' efforts to dodge past it
and have sight of the exquisite choir beyond, and of an east window
through which the humble worshipper in the nave might hope, in some
rare mystical moment, to catch a glimpse of the far Heavenly country
beyond.

I also noticed when looking round that it was an interior rich in
memorials to the long dead--old brasses and stone tablets on the walls,
and some large monuments. By chance the most imposing of the tombs was
so near my seat that with little difficulty I succeeded in reading and
committing to memory the whole contents of the very long inscription
cut in deep letters on the hard white stone. It was to the memory of
Sir Ranulph Damarell, who died in 1531, and was the head of a family
long settled in those parts, lord of the manor and many other things.
On more than one occasion he raised a troop