Moreover, Sotterley Church stands in a churchyard of unusually large dimensions. It must cover at least an acre of ground, and not half of this space shows the smallest sign of interments having been made in it during the present century. But, unhappily, Sotterley Church and churchyard lie in the middle of Sotterley Park--not that it was always so, for the park has come to the church, not the church to the park--and people will insist in going to church, even farmers and farm labourers will, and worshipping the Most High where their forefathers worshipped before them. The Hall of the Playters was pulled down during the last century, and the new hall--an ugly white-brick mansion of no pretension--was set up much nearer to the ancient church; and when Sotterley people died nothing could prevent their relatives from carrying their dead to the old graveyard and laying them where they themselves hoped to lie some day. But was not this a little too bad, to have a funeral procession of tearful clodhoppers passing through your park gates and under your very windows, asking no leave, but taking it in quite a brutal fashion? Therefore, about ten years ago, a vestry meeting, or something of the sort, was held in Sotterley. The landlord’s pleasure was signified, certain formalities were gone through, the tenantry, small and great, were told that it was desirable that Sotterley churchyard should be closed, and, the legal document being duly drawn up, an order was obtained from the Privy Council, and the churchyard was closed accordingly. Outside the park gates, in a place where four ways meet, a square patch of ground, scrubby and soppy, has been fenced off by a mean and ill-kept hedge, and in the middle of it stares rather than stands, a forbidding protuberance, an octagonal construction of cheap Sotterley bricks, covered with cheap Sotterley tiles, looking like a ginger beer stall in a cricket ground where there is no play going on. This thing is called a chapel, I believe, and here the Sotterley people must needs bring their dead. Will they all be brought here? High and low--rich and poor one with another? Well, to get rid of the funerals passing through the park was one point scored; but it was but a beginning. On Easter Monday last a meeting of the parish in vestry assembled was held as usual in Sotterley church. I am told that the parishioners, knowing what was coming, very discreetly kept away, all except the unhappy parson, who was bound to be there, the landlord and one, two, or three others, who, it is suspected, were told to be there. Forthwith a resolution drawn up beforehand was proposed, seconded, and carried unanimously--for the parson had nothing to do but to “put it to the meeting”--to the effect that it was desirable to pull down or shut up the church of Sotterley, and build another somewhere else. I am told that this