The clergyman now stopped, and the clerk then
said in a loud voice, "Let us sing to the praise and glory of God,
the forty-seventh psalm."
I cannot well express how affecting and edifying it seemed to me, to
hear this whole orderly and decent congregation, in this small
country church, joining together with vocal and instrumental music,
in the praise of their Maker. It was the more grateful, as having
been performed, not by mercenary musicians, but by the peaceful and
pious inhabitants of this sweet village. I can hardly figure to
myself any offering more likely to be grateful to God.
The congregation sang and prayed alternately several times, and the
tunes of the psalms were particularly lively and cheerful, though at
the same time sufficiently grave, and uncommonly interesting. I am
a warm admirer of all sacred music, and I cannot but add that that
of the Church of England is particularly calculated to raise the
heart to devotion; I own it often affected me even to tears.
The clergyman now stood up and made a short but very proper
discourse on this text: "Not all they who say, Lord, Lord! shall
enter the kingdom of heaven." His language was particularly plain,
though forcible; his arguments were no less plain, convincing, and
earnest, but contained nothing that was particularly striking. I do
not think the sermon lasted more than half an hour.
This clergyman had not perhaps a very prepossessing appearance; I
thought him also a little distant and reserved, and I did not quite
like his returning the bows of the farmers with a very formal nod.
I stayed till the service was quite over, and then went out of the
church with the congregation, and amused myself with reading the
inscriptions on the tombstones in the churchyard, which in general,
are simpler, more pathetic, and better written than ours.
There were some of them which, to be sure, were ludicrous and
laughable enough.
Among these is one on the tomb of a smith, which on account of its
singularity, I here copy and send you.
"My sledge and anvil he declined,
My bellows too have lost their wind;
My fire's extinct, my forge decayed,
My coals are spent, my iron's gone,
My nails are drove: my work is done."
Many of these epitaphs closed with the following quaint rhymes:
"Physicians were in vain;
God knew the best;
So here I rest."
In the body of the church I saw a marble monument of a son of the
celebrated Dr. Wallis, with the following simple and affecting
inscription:
"The same good sense which qualified him for every public employment
Taught him to spend his life here in retirement."
All the farmers whom I saw there were dressed, not as ours are, in
coarse frocks, but with some taste, in fine good cloth; and were to
be distinguished from the people of the town, not so much by their
dress, as by the greater simplicity and modesty of their behaviour.
Some soldiers, who probably were ambitious of being thought to know
the world, and to be wits, joined me, as I was looking at the
church, and seemed to be quite ashamed of it, as they said it was
only a very miserable church. On which I took the liberty to inform
them, that no church could be miserable which contained orderly and
good people.
I stayed here to dinner. In the afternoon there was no service; the
young people however, went to church, and there sang some few
psalms; others of the congregation were also present. This was
conducted with so much decorum, that I could hardly help considering
it as actually a kind of church-service. I stayed with great
pleasure till this meeting also was over.
I seemed indeed to be enchanted, and as if I could not leave this
village. Three times did I get off, in order to go on farther, and
as often returned, more than half resolved to spend a week, or more,
in my favourite Nettlebed.
But the recollection that I had but a few weeks to stay in England,
and that I must see Derbyshire, at length drove me away. I cast
many a longing, lingering look on the little church-steeple, and
those hospitable friendly roofs, where, all that morning, I had
found myself so perfectly at home.
It was now nearly three o'clock in the afternoon when I left this
place, and I was still eighteen miles from Oxford. However, I
seemed resolved to make more than one stage of it to Oxford, that
seat of the muses, and so, by passing the night about five miles
from it, to reach it in good time next morning.
The road from Nettlebed seemed to me but as one long fine gravel
walk in a neat garden. And my pace in it was varied, like that of
one walking in a garden: I sometimes walked quick, then slow, and
then sat down and read Milton.
When I had got about eight miles from Nettlebed, and was now not far
from Dorchester, I had the Thames at some distance on my left, and
on the opposite side I saw an extensive hill, behind which a tall
mast seemed to rise. This led me to suppose that on the other side
of the hill there must needs also be a river. The prospect I
promised myself from this hill could not possibly be passed, and so
I went out of the road to the left over a bridge across the Thames,
and mounted the hill, always keeping the mast in view.
