298 ANTIQUITIES OF SELBORNE. 



eligible than tiles. For shingles well seasoned, and cleft from 

 quartered timber, never warp, nor let in drifting snow ; nor do they 

 shiver with frost ; nor are they liable to be blown off, like tiles ; 

 but, when well nailed down, last for a long period, as experience has 

 shown us in this place, where those that face to the north are 

 known to have endured, untouched, by undoubted tradition, for 

 more than a century. 



Considering the size of the church, and the extent of the parish, 

 the churchyard is very scanty ; and especially as all wish to be 

 buried on the south side, which is become such a mass of mortality 

 that no person can be there interred without disturbing or displacing 

 the bones of his ancestors. There is reason to suppose that it 

 once was larger, and extended to what is now the vicarage court 

 and garden ; because many human bones have been dug up in 

 those parts several yards without the present limits. At the east 

 end are a few graves ; yet none till very lately on the north side ; 

 but, as two or three families of best repute have begun to bury in 

 that quarter, prejudice may wear out by degrees, and their example 

 be followed by the rest of the neighbourhood. 



In speaking of the church, I have all along talked of the east 

 and west end, as if the chancel stood exactly true to those points 

 of the compass ; but this is by no means the case, for the fabric 

 bears so much to the north of the east that the four corners of the 

 tower, and not the four sides, stand to the four cardinal points. 

 The best method of accounting for this deviation seems to be, that 

 the workmen, who probably were employed in the longest days, 

 endeavoured 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 manner of old times, the hall 

 was open to the roof ; and so continued, 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. 



