"As the birds sing early matins To the God of nature's praise, This its nobler daily music To the God of grace shall raise. "And when evening shadows soften Chancel-cross, and tower, and aisle, It shall blend its vesper summons With the day's departing smile. "Year by year the steeple-music O'er the tended graves shall pour Where the dust of saints is garner'd, Till the Master comes once more." J. M. NEALE. Illustration: Meopham Church THE TOWER When the Vicar and the Squire met on their way to church the following day, the conversation of the previous evening was thus resumed:-- "You will, I am sure, agree with me," said Mr. Ambrose, "in regarding the church spire as ever teaching _outside_ the building the same lesson that the open timber roof, as you so truly said yesterday, is teaching _inside_. It is always pointing the thoughts of thoughtful men up above the earthly temple." "Quite so; and, as is the case with many other great teachers, the earthly fabric has, I believe, in both these cases, a very humble origin; for as the grandest cathedral roof is but a development of the simple _tent_ which formed the early habitation of the once rude inhabitants of this and other countries, so has its lofty and elegant spire gradually raised itself from the low and unpretending roof which covered in the towers of our earliest parish churches. "I am inclined myself to think that, as a matter of taste and beauty, no church tower is complete without a spire in some form[193], and it is a question whether, in every case, the tower was not at first built with a view to such an ornament. The termination with a flat or only embattled cornice does not harmonize well with pointed architecture; the spiral form seems to me the only appropriate termination; and, as you say, the symbolic teaching of this part of the building depends upon it. And yet, though it may almost seem a contradiction to what I have said, the spire always needs some object for the eye to rest upon at its summit. The time-honoured _weather-cock_ which every body knows to be the emblem of _watchfulness_, seems by far the most convenient and suitable, though I am aware that other forms--such as a dragon, and a boat--are fixed to the summits of some spires."