54 On Edington Church, and Memorials of its History. 
thus stiffly at their orisons. We must feel uncomfortable ourselves 
whilst we look on the forced attitudes and painful prostrations of 
the little knights or lordlings around their parental pattern of 
buckram and stiffness. Angels hover above, of inferior material 
and vastly inferior workmanship to the human figures below. The 
whole tomb would really be an ornament in almost any other part 
of the church, but it seems so exceedingly out of place in the chaste 
yet rich chancel of William of Edington, that the archeologist 
cannot but wish Sir E. Lewys rested in some other spot than where 
now his effigy meets our view. 
Opposite to this tomb is an entirely modern work of art. When 
I say it is from the chisel of Chantrey, I say enough to make it 
acceptable to the most scrupulous Gothic archeologist. It repre- 
sents the last moments of Sir Simon Taylor. The dying youth 
seems scarcely alive, scarcely dead, and the marble is so wondrously 
wrought that the looker-on hardly knows whether the figure has 
passed from life or not. The afflicted relatives watch the passing 
spirit, and hang over the beloved form as though they would grasp 
that passing spirit, even if it must quit the earthly tabernacle. 
Chantrey has fully maintained his high fame in this exquisite 
monument, which even of itself repays a visit to this beautiful 
church. 
In the nave is a singular monument, which appears to be the 
erection of a sculptor who was fired with an ambition to rival the 
monument of Sir E. Lewys. I have no doubt the descendant of 
the gentleman and lady represented on this tomb were fully as 
piously desirous of doing justice to their ancestor as the children 
who raised the monument in the chancel, but I trust I shall be 
excused observing that the modern dress of our bold yeomanry— 
I mean gaiters and tight (what shall I call them?) tight trunk- 
hose are not well suited for monumental immortality. I trust in 
this, and any other remarks I may have made, no person will 
suppose that I would offend any living being; indeed, in any 
observations I have made with regard to the dilapidation of the 
fabric, I have fully before my eyes the fact that this generation 
has nearly three centuries of destruction, fanatic spoliation, and 
