IV.] 
OF SELBORNE. 
477 
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, pro- 
bably, 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 contem- 
plate it with pleasure, and deem it an object well worthy of 
his pencil. 
