v.j PROFESSORIAL LIFE. 109 



church. They have a common hall, common laws, have 

 a nominal master, Lord Guildford, a resident chaplain 

 who reads prayers daily, and they are obliged to distribute 

 for ever bread and beer gratuitously at their gate, of 

 which I partook.' 



Although he never had leisure to devote himself 

 earnestly to the study of architecture, yet interest in old 

 historic buildings, and love for all that they contained of 

 ancient and beautiful, continued strong in him to the 

 end. In this journey he turned towards Lympston, 

 which had for him another and more sacred interest. 

 It was there his mother died when he was yet only a 

 year old. There he found an old sexton who remem- 

 bered his father and mother, ' Some particulars he told 

 me, calmly enough, thrilled me/ So he writes years 

 afterwards. It is thus he describes this visit in a letter 

 to his sister at the time : 



'ExEfER, June 22nd, 1834. 



' . . You may conceive, better than I can de- 

 scribe, my feelings at that moment. For some days 

 my sympathies had gradually been warming towards a 

 point in which I felt so deep and melancholy, and at the 

 same time so romantic an interest. It is but rarely that 

 in the life of a sober man this species of interest can 

 be so fully worked up as in my case. I left Exmouth 

 early in the morning, and sauntered up the bank of the 

 Exe, under a melancholy sky, and with somewhat ex- 

 cited feelings, determined not easily to forego the ob- 

 ject of finding the spot where my parents lived, though 

 by no means sure how I should easily effect it. I walked 



>st through tlir village without seeing anything like 

 a communicative face. I almost fancied I should have 

 11 received as a known face, instead of being an 

 object of not a little curiosity. At length I inquired inl- 

 ine church, whi< h is not very conspicuous, ami, ;is I 

 expected, found an old sexton who, I thought, mi^ht 



i chronicler of more than twenty-four years back. 

 I soon entered into conversation with him, found that 



