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.
