An odd fact, unknown to those who merely pass through the place, is that the greater part of "Crawley" is not in that parish at all, but in the adjoining parish of Ifield. Only the church and a few houses on the same side of the street belong to Crawley. In these later years the church, once kept rigidly locked, is generally open, and the celebrated inscription carved on one of the tie-beams of the nave is to be seen. It is in old English characters, gilded, and runs in this admonitory fashion: Man yn wele bewar, for warldly good makyth man blynde He war be for whate comyth be hynde. When the stranger stands puzzling it out, unconscious of not being alone, it is sufficiently startling to hear the unexpected voice of the sexton, "be hynde," remarking that it is "arnshunt." [Illustration: THE "GEORGE," CRAWLEY.] The sturdy old tower is crowned with a gilded weather vane representing Noah's dove returning to the Ark with the olive-leaf, when the waters were abated from off the earth: a device peculiarly appropriate, intentionally or not, to Crawley, overlooking the oft-flooded valley of the Mole. But the most interesting feature of this church is the rude representation of the Trinity carved on the western face of the tower: three awful figures of very ancient date, on a diminishing scale, built into fifteenth-century niches. Above, on the largest scale, is the Supreme Being, holding what seems to be intended for a wheel, one of the ancient symbols of eternity. The sculptor, endeavouring to realise the grovelling superstition of his remote age, has put his "fear of God," in a very literal sense, into the grim, truculent, merciless, all-judging smile of the image; and thus, in enduring stone, we have preserved to us the terrified minds of the dark ages, when God, the loving Father, was non-existent, and was only the Judge, swift to punish. The other figures are merely like infantile grotesques. XXIII There is but one literary celebrity whose name goes down to posterity associated with Crawley. At Vine Cottage, near the railway station, resided Mark Lemon, editor of _Punch_, who died here on May 20th, 1870. Since his time the expansion of Crawley has caused the house to be converted into a grocer's shop. [Sidenote: PRIZE-FIGHTS] [Illustration: SCULPTURED EMBLEM OF THE HOLY TRINITY, CRAWLEY CHURCH.]