Oh, what feelings came over me on finding myself again in an edifice devoted to the religion of my country! I had not been in such a place I cannot tell how long--certainly not for years; and now I had found my way there again, it appeared as if I had fallen asleep in the pew of the old church of pretty D[ereham]. I had occasionally done so when a child, and had suddenly woke up. Yes, surely I had been asleep and had woken up; but, no! alas, no! I had not been asleep--at least not in the old church--if I had been asleep I had been walking in my sleep, struggling, striving, learning, and unlearning in my sleep. Years had rolled away whilst I had been asleep--ripe fruit had fallen, green fruit had come on whilst I had been asleep--how circumstances had altered, and above all myself, whilst I had been asleep. No, I had not been asleep in the old church! I was in a pew it is true, but not the pew of black leather, in which I sometimes fell asleep in days of yore, but in a strange pew; and then my companions, they were no longer those of days of yore. I was no longer with my respectable father and mother, and my dear brother, but with the gypsy cral {277} and his wife, and the gigantic Tawno, the Antinous of the dusky people. And what was I myself? No longer an innocent child, but a moody man, bearing in my face, as I knew well, the marks of my strivings and strugglings, of what I had learned and unlearned; nevertheless, the general aspect of things brought to my mind what I had felt and seen of yore. There was difference enough it is true, but still there was a similarity--at least I thought so,--the church, the clergyman, and the clerk differing in many respects from those of pretty D . . ., put me strangely in mind of them; and then the words!--by-the-bye, was it not the magic of the words which brought the dear enchanting past so powerfully before the mind of Lavengro? for the words were the same sonorous words of high import which had first made an impression on his childish ear in the old church of pretty Dereham.