96 A KENTISH PARISH 



and we can hardly say more in his favour than that. 

 There is soup to be sent out to some sickly child, 

 blighted by consumption before she has bloomed. 

 There is a bottle of port for the elderly labourer, who 

 has at last " caught his death of cold " while working 

 in the ditches in all weathers. And there is quinine 

 for the old folks who are suffering from the neuralgia 

 which hangs about with the fogs in the bottom of the 

 valleys. 



If the vicar is proud of anything, it is of his prize 

 Dorkings and of his church. Of the former we need 

 say nothing. Has not their fame been sounded in the 

 ears of the frequenters of the , grand poultry shows 

 everywhere between Islington and Sydenham ? But 

 the venerable church is really an interesting monument, 

 with the tracery of its windows and the quaint sculpture 

 of its gargoyles ; with the soberly-blazoned windows 

 and sculptured tablets that happily escaped the ravages 

 of the iconoclasts ; with its square grey tower domi- 

 nating the chimneyed and gabled house-tops, between 

 the downs and the woodlands the tower capped at 

 one corner by the lantern characteristic of earlier 

 Kentish church architecture. Those storied tablets 

 between the pillars of the aisles record the virtues and 

 biographies of departed Godwins, while the flags of the 

 chancel are inlaid with brasses of Godwins in chain- 

 mail, their hounds reposing at their feet ; of Godwins 

 in slashed doublets and trunk-hose ; of female God- 

 wins in ruffs and pointed stomachers. In a low, long 

 niche in one of the side aisles lies the cross-legged 



