MOORLAND AND BORDER CHURCHES IN DETON. 419 
The beautiful font in Brent Church, of which a drawing is here 
given, is made of a very fine and compact red sandstone. The 
carving is of the late conventional Gorman type, out of which grew 
the freer and more natural Early English foliage. 
These are my imperfect and fragmentary notes on some of the 
old Moorland churches of South Devon. We have seen how muti- 
lated, how roughly handled, such buildings have been in the poli- 
tical and religious storms which have swept over the land. Without 
infringing on any rule of this Society, may I be permitted to 
express a hope that they may be treated with more veneration 
and respect when the changes which are said (I know not how 
truly) to be "looming in the future" actually occur, and that 
they may never be alienated from pious uses. To plead for them 
on no higher ground, they are the landmarks, to a great extent, of 
our country's history, the monuments of the architectural skill of 
our ancestors, the gems of our English landscapes. 
The castles and ancient defences of Britain, with a few stately 
exceptions, are fast crumbling to decay. The play-houses, where 
the old English dramas were acted, and where Shakespeare's im- 
mortal scenes were first represented, have long since passed away. 
The abbeys and monasteries of the land, the houses of philanthropy 
and learning in the middle ages, are magnificent only in ruins. 
The halls of those ancient guilds, which laid the foundation of 
England's material prosperity, are scarcely anywhere to be seen. 
But in every parish of the land, in the crowded street of the town, 
in the quiet woodland vale, on the bold and rocky coast, on the 
bleak and desolate moor, there stands the church, with its massive 
tower or its heaven-pointing spire — the symbol in our midst for 
centuries past (let us hope it may be for centuries to come) of our 
faith in God, of our hope in immortality ; for as the poet Words- 
worth says — 
" They dreamt not of a perishable house 
Who thus could build." 
