it has not been further utilised as a finger-post as well as a lamp-post! I can only put down the omission to do this to an oversight,—a wasted opportunity to add to the disfigurement of the country-side!
We baited the horses at a little inn here, and, whilst they were resting, took a stroll round the place to see if we could find anything of interest, but failed. So we took a glance inside the church, and there we discovered an astonishing specimen of architectural incongruity. The Gothic arches, we observed, were supported by purely classical pillars. How this came about we could not say positively, but we put it down to our old enemy the restorer. We should imagine that it was done at the time that the classical revival was rampant in England, when Wren was in his glory, and only want of money saved many a Gothic building from being altered to taste. Fashions in architecture come and go as do fashions in dress.
Leaving Metheringham, a good-going road that took us through a very pleasant country brought us quickly to the hard-featured village of Martin, composed of brick-built cottages that came close up to the roadway, without as much as a bit of garden in front to soften their uncomeliness, as though land in this wild remote district were as precious as in London, so that every possible inch of it needs must be built on! In the street, as we passed down, we caught a sight of a brick "steeple-house"—I use the term meaningly and of set purpose—quite in keeping with its unprepossessing surroundings.
