The tall grass growing rank on the graves without rustles as it waves to and fro in the wind against the small diamond panes, yellow and green with age--rustles with a melancholy sound; for we know that this window was once far above the ground, but the earth has risen till nearly on a level--risen from the accumulation of human remains. Yet, but a day or two before, on the Sunday morning, in this pew, bright, restless children smiled at each other, exchanged guilty pushes, while the sunbeams from the arrow-slit above shone upon their golden hair. Let us not think of this further, but dimly through the window, 'as through a glass darkly,' see the green yew with its red berries, and afar the elms and beeches, brown and yellow. The steep down rises over them, and the moving grey patch upon it is a flock of sheep. The white wall is cold and damp, and the beams of the roof overhead, though the varnish is gone from them, are dark with slow decay. In the recess lies the figure of a knight in armour, rudely carved, beside his lady, still more rudely rendered in her stiff robes, and of him an ill-spelt inscription proudly records that he 'builded ye greate howse at'--no matter where; but history records that cruel war wrapped it in flames before half a generation was gone, so that the boast of his building great houses reads as a bitter mockery. There stands opposite a grander monument to a mighty earl, and over it hangs a breastplate and gauntlets of steel. The villagers will tell that in yonder deep shady 'combe' or valley, in the thick hazel-bushes, when the 'beetle with his drowsy hum' rises through the night air, there comes the wicked old earl, wearing this very breastplate, these iron gloves, to expiate one evil deed of yore. And if we sit in this pew long enough, till the mind is magnetized with the spirit of the past, till the early evening sends its shadowy troops to fill the distant corners of the silent church, then, perhaps, there may come to us forms gliding noiselessly over the stone pavement of the aisles--forms not repelling or ghastly, but filling us with an eager curiosity. Then through the slit made for that very purpose centuries since, when the pew was in a family chapel--through the slit in the pillar, we may see cowled monks assemble at the altar, muttering as magicians might over vessels of gold. The clank of scabbards upon the stones is stilled, the rustle of gowns is silent; if there is a sound, it is of subdued sobs, as the aged monk blesses the troop on the eve of their march. Not even yet has the stern idol of war ceased to demand its victims; even yet brave hearts and noble minds must perish, and leave sterile the hopes of the elders and the love of woman. There is still light enough left to read the few simple lines on the plain marble slab, telling how 'Lieutenant ----,' at Inkerman, at Lucknow, or, later still, at Coomassie, fell doing his duty. And these plain