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.

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