388 Conversazione. 
how to use it, a glance round the church will show him what ground 
he is upon, and what families he is at liberty to connect with the 
place. High up in the tracery of some window, or far back in some 
neglected corner, he will spy a bit of coloured glass, half covered 
with whitewash, turned inside-out or topsy-turvy by some un-arch- 
eological glazier, a fragment which nobody perhaps had thought 
of noticing before; he asks the clerk for a ladder, which when that 
astonished functionary has produced, your antiquary creeps up, puts 
on his spectacles, scrapes off the whitewash, detects some faded 
mark of ancient chivalry, something which tells him, as plainly as 
if he were reading it in a book, that he is within an old dominion 
of Seymour, or Hungerford, or Scrope. 
Our parish churches are therefore places that require very close 
examination ; but the labour of visiting so many, of copying inscrip- 
tions, and of describing architecture,—of doing all this, perhaps, in 
unfortunate weather, or under pressure of time, is a great tax upon 
the patience of a single individual; who after all can only have 
one pair of hands and one pair of eyes. It is, therefore, in the 
power of the resident clergy, either by themselves, or some one 
under their direction, to be well acquainted with all the history 
and contents of their own churches. They are on the spot; know 
the local history ; can easily get drawings and copies of memorials. 
It would be no very great trouble to put these things down, on 
rainy days, in a book kept for the purpose, and marked “ parochial, 
—not to be removed or destroyed.” If this had been done years 
ago, and if every parish chest contained, besides the official regis- 
ters, some such archeological volume, in which successive incum- 
bents had only entered the several changes and events—(and few 
enough they often are that would require to be noted) ; still, if this 
had been done, or even were now to be done, you may easily con- 
ceive how useful and welcome a mass of materials would be ready, 
whenever the general dealer in literature of this kind should go 
his round, with the intention of embodying the collections in one 
systematic history. Nobody but those who have tried it can tell 
how much trouble it takes to prepare, correctly and properly, the 
materials for the memoir even of one parish. What then must it 
be where there are hundreds to be described? And how greatly 
is that difficulty increased when centuries have passed away ; when 
family after family has died out, when their very names have been 
lost from the list of living county gentry, and the site of their once 
hospitable castle or mansion has become a pasture for flocks; leav- 
ing only tradition to tell the tale. 
Certainly, an imaginative mind may fill up blanks, and supply 
the want of regular history. Some writer of works of fancy may 
visit our ancient monuments, strike his magic wand upon them, 
and conjure up for our delight the forms and sights of ancient 
days. Imagination may do anything; and to digress for one mo- 
