AN ANACHRONISM
- shire, strangely out of proportion to the requirements
of the parish. This church has the architectural quality, so rare in English churches, of being all of one period. Like Salisbury Cathedral it has the merit of unity of design. We noticed some fine gargoyles on the tower, and a few statues still remain in the niches thereof. Within, the building hardly comes up to the expectations raised by its splendid exterior. It looks spacious and well proportioned, but cold and bare, possibly chiefly due to the want of stained glass. We noticed the mutilated effigy of an ecclesiastic in an arched recess of the north wall, and above, enclosed within a glass case, was an ancient broken silver chalice, doubtless exhumed from his tomb. But perhaps the greatest thing of archæological interest here is the superb and elaborately carved Easter Sepulchre, the finest we have seen in England. At the base of this are sculptured stone figures representing the Roman guards watching the tomb; and these are shown clad in medieval armour!—a curious instance of inconsistency, but then there were no art critics in those days, and the medieval carver and painter were a law unto themselves! Yet in spite of their oftentimes glaring anachronisms, the works of the medieval artists, be they sculptors or painters, were always effective and suggestive of life, and never failed to be decorative. Modern art, as a rule, simply reverses these conditions. It is above all things correct—more precise than poetical; magnificent in technique, but wanting in spirit.
After Heckington the country became more
