Where the roadway climbs round the most impressive bend, and the great wooded hills look down on the other side of the valley, with almost equidistant notches in their skyline, like the embrasures of cyclopean fortifications, stands the ancient church of Branscombe. It is oddly placed, considerably below the level of the road, and is so old and rugged, and has been so long untouched, that it looks more like some silver-grey and lichened rocky outcrop, rudely fashioned in the form of a church, than the work of builder and architect. And it is in such entire accord with the rocks and trees, the ferns and grasses, the spouting rivulets and moist skies of this secluded valley, that the dedication of it should more appropriately be to the sylvan gods of the classic age. There have been those scribbling tourists who, passing by and looking upon the time-worn building, have acted the part of _agent provocateur_ to “restoring” zealots by dwelling upon the dampness of it, and the “meanness” of the box-like deal pews of the interior; but not yet have their instigations to crime against the picturesque been acted upon, and the ferns and mosses still sprout from the time-worn tower and the interior is still, in its whitewash, its pews, and its wooden pulpit, an example of the simple sway of the churchwarden and the village carpenter of a simpler age. One highly elaborate monument redeems the church from a charge of emptiness. It is the interesting memorial of Joan Tregarthin, her husbands, John Kellaway and John Wadham, and her twenty children; all of them duly sculptured in effigy. The Wadhams were the great landowners of Branscombe, away back to the fourteenth century. Among those twenty children is Nicholas Wadham, the last of his race, who died in 1609, and with his wife Dorothy founded Wadham College, Oxford. The churchyard of Branscombe is a well-stored repository of unusual epitaphs, ranging from the sentimental to the unconsciously humorous and the terrifying. Of the last sort the following is a good example: “Stay, passenger, a while and read Your doome I am You must bee dead.” The uncertainty as to what this malignant gentleman really intends to convey does by no means lessen his impressiveness. The lengthiest of them all is the following, on a time-worn altar-tomb outside the porch: “PRO. x. 7. The memory of the ivst is blessed. “An epitaph on WILLIAM LEE, the Father, and ROBERT LEE, the son: both buryed together in one grave. October the 2: 1658.