My wife--when clos'd that fatal night, My being turned once more to stone, I watched her spirit take its flight, And found myself again alone. The sunshine of the heart was dead, The glory of the home was fled, The smile that made the dark world bright, The love that made all duty light. Now that those scenes of bliss are gone, Now that the long years roll away, The two Ash Wednesdays blend in one, One sad yet almost festal day: The emblem of that union blest, Where lofty souls together rest, Star differing each from star in glory, Yet telling each its own high story. In another part of the graveyard is an altar-tomb with a Latin inscription perpetuating the name of Thomas Deane, of the Park--a house near Monk's Heath--who endowed the parish school, and who is described as a lover of God, his Church, his King, and of all good deeds. Not far distant is an old disused font that was dug up half a century ago; it has a circular bowl capacious enough to immerse a child in, and, in its general outline, much resembles the one at Prestbury, both being probably of the same age. From the churchyard we step into the rector's garden. The rectory house presents much the same appearance that it did fifty years ago, when Edward Stanley was its occupant; indeed, so little is it changed that it would require but little stretch of the imagination to picture the kindly-hearted old pastor watching the movements of his feathered friends, or, mounted upon his little black cob, setting out on a mission of mercy to some member of his rustic flock, his pockets the while filled with sweets and gingerbread for the children, with whom he was ever a favourite. The house is the _beau-ideal_ of a country clergyman's home. It has no architectural beauties or peculiarities to boast of, and there is nothing pretentious about it; but it is a roomy, enjoyable sort of place, with an air of comfort and contentment pervading it that suggests the idea of the happy domestic life peculiar to England. A trellis work that forms a kind of verandah extends along the front, with honeysuckles, roses, and creeping plants climbing round the supports, and meeting overhead in a bower of vernal beauty. Of that verandah, which forms a kind of balcony, the Dean's mother thus wrote in one of her letters:--