in her appearance. Her dress, though humble in the extreme,
was scrupulously clean. Some trivial respect, too, had been
awarded her, for she did not take her seat among the village
poor, but sat alone on the steps of the altar. She seemed to
have survived all love, all friendship, all society; and to have
nothing left her but the hopes of heaven. When I saw her
feebly rising and bending her aged form in prayer; habitually
conning her prayer-book, which her palsied hand and failing
eyes could not permit her to read, but which she evidently
knew by heart; I felt persuaded that the faltering voice of
that poor woman arose to heaven far before the responses of
the clerk, the swell of the organ, or the chanting of the choir.

I am fond of loitering about country churches; and this
was so delightfully situated, that it frequently attracted me.
It stood on a knoll, round which a small stream made a beauti-
ful bend, and then wound its way through a long reach of soft
meadow scenery. The church was surrounded by yew trees,
which seemed almost coeval with itself. Its tall Gothic spire
shot up lightly from among them, with rooks and crows gen-
erally wheeling about it. I was seated there one still sunny
morning, watching two laborers who were digging a grave.
They had chosen one of the most remote and neglected cor-
ners of the churchyard, where, by the number of nameless
graves around, it would appear that the indigent and friend-
less were huddled into the earth. I was told that the new-
made grave was for the only son of a poor widow. While I
was meditating on the distinctions of worldly rank, which ex-
tend thus down into the very dust, the toll of the bell announced
the approach of the funeral. They were the obsequies of
poverty, with which pride had nothing to do. A coffin of the
plainest materials, without pall or other covering, was borne
by some of the villagers. The sexton walked before with an
air of cold indifference. There were no mock mourners in the
trappings of affected woe, but there was one real mourner who
feebly tottered after the corpse. It was the aged mother of
the deceased -- the poor old woman whom I had seen seated

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