“This excellent old machine,” said the Warden, “had been lying in a rubbish chamber of the church tower for at least a century; when the clerk, who is a little of an antiquarian, unearthed it, and I advised him to set it here, where it used to stand;--not with any idea of its being used (though there is as much need of it now as ever), but that the present age may see what comforts it has lost.” They sat down a few moments on the circular seat, and looked at the pretty scene of this quiet little village, clustered round the old church as a centre; a collection of houses, mostly thatched, though there were one or two, with rather more pretension, that had roofs of red tiles. Some of them were stone cottages, whitewashed, but the larger edifices had timber frames, filled in with brick and plaster, which seemed to have been renewed in patches, and to be a frailer and less durable material than the old oak of their skeletons. They were gabled, with lattice windows, and picturesquely set off with projecting stones, and many little patchwork additions, such as, in the course of generations, the inhabitants had found themselves to need. There was not much commerce, apparently, in this little village, there seeming to be only one shop, with some gingerbread, penny whistles, ballads, and such matters, displayed in the window; and there, too, across the little green, opposite the church, was the village alehouse, with its bench under the low projecting eaves, with a Teniers scene of two wayfaring yeomen drinking a pot of beer and smoking their pipes. With Redclyffe’s Yankee feelings, there was something sad to think how the generations had succeeded one another, over and over, in innumerable succession, in this little spot, being born here, living, dying, lying down among their fathers’ dust, and forthwith getting up again, as it were, and recommencing the same meaningless round, and really bringing nothing to pass; for probably the generation of to-day, in so secluded and motionless a place as this, had few or no ideas in advance of their ancestors of five centuries ago. It seems not worth while that more than one generation of them should have existed. Even in dress, with their smock frocks and breeches, they were just like their fathers. The stirring blood of the new land,--where no man dwells in his father’s house,--where no man thinks of dying in his birthplace,--awoke within him, and revolted at the thought; and, as connected with it, revolted at all the hereditary pretensions which, since his stay here, had exercised such an influence over the fanciful part of his nature. In another mood, the village might have seemed a picture of rural peace, which it would have been worth while to give up ambition to enjoy; now, as his warmer impulse stirred, it was a weariness to think of. The new American was stronger in him than the hereditary Englishman. “I should go mad of it!” exclaimed he aloud.