April 3d.--I walked with J-----, two days ago, to Eastham, a village on
the road to Chester, and five or six miles from Rock Ferry. On our way
we passed through a village, in the centre of which was a small stone
pillar, standing on a pedestal of several steps, on which children were
sitting and playing. I take it to have been an old Catholic cross; at
least, I know not what else it is. It seemed very ancient. Eastham is
the finest old English village I have seen, with many antique houses, and
with altogether a rural and picturesque aspect, unlike anything in
America, and yet possessing a familiar look, as if it were something I
had dreamed about. There were thatched stone cottages intermixed with
houses of a better kind, and likewise a gateway and gravelled walk, that
perhaps gave admittance to the Squire's mansion. It was not merely one
long, wide street, as in most New England villages, but there were
several crooked ways, gathering the whole settlement into a pretty small
compass. In the midst of it stood a venerable church of the common red
freestone, with a most reverend air, considerably smaller than that of
Bebbington, but more beautiful, and looking quite as old. There was ivy
on its spire and elsewhere. It looked very quiet and peaceful, and as if
it had received the people into its low arched door every Sabbath for
many centuries. There were many tombstones about it, some level with the
ground, some raised on blocks of stone, on low pillars, moss-grown and
weather-worn; and probably these were but the successors of other stones
that had quite crumbled away, or been buried by the accumulation of dead
men's dust above them.
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