=Description of the interior.=--The gradual ascent to St. Martin's Church from the lych-gate is somewhat remarkable. After turning a sharp corner in the churchyard path, you walk up nine steps to the Western Door, and from this door there is an ascent of eleven steps to the altar. This much resembles what is so noticeable a feature in Canterbury Cathedral. On the south wall of the tower-porch there is inserted a monumental stone, about which there has been a good deal of discussion. It has been described as a piece of a Roman coffin, but this is clearly a mistake. Both the character of the inscription, and the chamfering of the upper part, not unlike the tomb of Stephen Langton in St. Michael's Chapel in the Cathedral, show that it may be attributed to the thirteenth century. The letters are fragmentary, and slightly indistinct. We can, however, make out [dagger] [iota] [reverse solidus], and on the other side [reverse epsilon] ARISCVS. It has been suggested that this word may have been "Mariscus," and then the stone might possibly have been the boundary-stone of a marsh; but I think there can be no doubt that it is an ordinary sepulchral slab. Till two years ago, the first feeling of visitors to the church was one of profound disappointment. They had been informed that St. Martin's was the oldest church in England; but the proofs of antiquity were not obvious at a casual glance, and the Early English chancel arch presented itself most obtrusively to the view, the walls of the nave, too, being covered with a thick layer of modern-looking yellowish plaster. It is rather amusing, sometimes, to hear the comments and to observe the behaviour of casual visitors. Many of them are from the United States of America, where the church is placed on the "list of sights" to be seen during their European tour. A few of the more unintelligent put their heads inside the building for two or three minutes, say to one another "this is an interesting old church," and then walk away with a proud consciousness that they have _done_ St. Martin's. The present writer remembers lionising a party of Americans, and completely failing to engross their attention by any historical or antiquarian description. At last, in despair, he asked them to write their names in the visitors' book kept in the vestry, where it so happened that the last names written were those of the Duchess of Edinburgh and her children. Then their interest was at once aroused, and they went away in a state of perfect happiness because their autographs were inscribed in the same page as those of Royalty! At another time the writer was preaching a sermon, on the festival of St. Martin, bishop and confessor. He was surprised to notice an allusion to his sermon in one of the leading London newspapers on the following day, with a general tone of satisfaction that Protestant England still entertained such devotion and reverence for the great _Martin Luther_, to whom (in