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.
