252 WHITE 



cardinal points. The best method of accounting for this 

 deviation seems to be that the workmen, who probably were 

 employed in the longest days, endeavored to set the chancels 

 to the rising of the sun. 



Close by the church, at the west end, stands the vicarage- 

 house ; an old, but roomy and convenient, edifice. It faces 

 very agreeably to the morning sun, and is divided from the 

 village by a neat and cheerful court. According to the man- 

 ner of old times, the hall was open to the roof ; and so con- 

 tinued, probably, till the vicars became family men, and began 

 to want more conveniences ; when they flung a floor across, 

 and, by partitions, divided the space into chambers. In this 

 hall we remember a date, some time in the reign of Elizabeth ; 

 it was over the door that leads to the stairs. 



Behind the house is a garden of an irregular shape, but well 

 laid out ; whose terrace commands so romantic and picturesque 

 a prospect, that the first master in landscape might contemplate 

 it with pleasure, and deem it an object well worthy of his pencil. 



LETTER V 



IN the church-yard of this village is a yew-tree, whose aspect 

 bespeaks it to be of a great age : it seems to have seen several 

 centuries, and is probably coeval with the church, and therefore 

 may be deemed an antiquity : the body is squat, short, and 

 thick, and measures twenty-three feet in the girth, supporting 

 a head of suitable extent to its bulk. This is a male tree, which 

 in the spring sheds clouds of dust, and fills the atmosphere 

 around with its farina. 



As far as we have been able to observe, the males of this 

 species become much larger than the females ; and it has so 

 fallen out that most of the yew-trees in the church-yards of this 

 neighborhood are males : but this must have been matter of 

 mere accident, since men, when they first planted yews, little 

 dreamed that there were sexes in trees. 



In a yard, in the midst of the street, till very lately, grew a 

 middle-sized female tree of the same species, which commonly 



