NEWFIELD. 



ItOBEET WALKER. 155 



fule," said he: "thoo dusn't think thoo's to hev 

 mare than .other folk ! I'se content wi' meeat 

 and claes." 



Newfield Church, in Seathwaite, is the place 

 where Robert Walker, called "the wonderful," 

 exercised his office for sixty years. The 

 grey farmsteads stand under their sy- 

 camores, dispersed in the vale, and up the slope 

 which meets the Walna Scar track from Coniston. 

 Rocky and wooded knolls diversify the dale ; and 

 the full beck runs down to join the Duddon, for 

 which it is often mistaken : but the Duddon is 

 unseen here, so deep lies its channel among the 

 rocks. The church is little loftier or larger than 

 the houses near. But for the bell, the traveller 

 would hardly have noticed it for a church on ap- 

 proaching ; but when he has reached it, there is the 

 porch, and the little graveyard with a few tombs, 

 and the spreading yew, encircled by the seat of 

 stones and turf, where the early comers sit and rest 

 till the bell calls them in. A little dial, on a 

 whitened post in the middle of the enclosure, tells 

 the time to the neighbours who have no clocks. 

 Just outside the wall is a white cottage, so humble 

 that the stranger thinks it cannot be the parsonage: 

 yet the climbing roses and glittering evergreens, and 

 clear lattices, and pure un cracked walls, look as if 

 it might be. He walks slowly past the porch, and 

 sees some one who tells him that it is indeed Robert 

 Walker's dwelling, and courteously 



BOBEBT WALKEB. • , i • , ,1 /» 



invites him in to see the scene 01 

 those life-long charities. Here it was that the 

 distant parishioners were fed on Sundays with 

 broth, for which the whole week's supply of meat 



