I noticed in the church a carved and coloured screen with some faded figures on it, and on the wall of a side chapel hung two old helmets and breastplates, somewhat rusty. I love to see ancient armour hanging in our churches, it takes the mind back to the days of knightly chivalry and recalls the never-returning romance of them--not the romance of fancy, but the romance of a past reality. Outside the church I found some open stone steps leading to two priests' chambers, one chamber over the other, but what interested me most was its richly sculptured west front; at the top of this are some good but unfortunately much weather-worn grinning gargoyles, for Time has been at work on these and has supplemented the carving of the monks with his, even, it may be, adding to their grotesqueness. Over and round the top of the big doorway is a quaint and gruesome representation of the resurrection, showing dead men rising from their coffins, one man being represented as lifting the lid of his and peering out with a look of genuine surprise as though he did not realise what was happening; others had risen and were kneeling on the ground with hands folded in the attitude of prayer, and all looked very much aghast. Skilful indeed was the hand of the medieval sculptor to obtain these expressions. It was a nightmare in carving, crudely done but startlingly effective. I am glad I do not attend that church and have to face each Sunday that terrible story in stone; it is enough to wish death the end of all. When men could not read the monks talked to them in carving, though rarely so horribly as this; mostly those monks were in a jovial mood, and so I prefer them, as witness their grinning gargoyles, their merry devils, and frequent mirthful representations of men in the dumps; they were artists of no mean order, and verily, I believe, in their hearts loved a joke better than a sermon: truly they joked far better than they preached, for their preaching seems forced--not so their jokes! To the right of the doorway there is a curious carving of a man entering the jaws of some unearthly monster; the drift of this was wholly beyond me--surely it could not have been intended for Jonah being swallowed by the whale, for the monster's head, and that was all there was of him, bore no resemblance to that of a whale or to any creature that ever walked the earth or swam the sea, unless doubtfully in the prehistoric ages. A local rhyme perpetuates the character of the spire of this church with two of its near neighbours thus: Bloxham for length, Adderbury for strength, And King's Sutton for beauty.