1854-1857 249 sufficiently to allow him to enter sideways, and a strangely mottled arm was extended to receive the can of turpentine. It transpired that all the paint had come off the walls of the bath and was adhering to the body of Mr. H--, who presented the appearance of a madrepore statue with inlets of giallo antico, serpentine, lapis lazuli and porphyry. The Prince of the Black Islands in the story of the Fisherman and the Efreet was nothing to Mr. H-, for the Prince " from his waist to the soles of his feet was stone ; and from his waist to the hair of his head was as other men." But Mr. H-was, as far as appearance went, stone all over. My father was very hot when he left the bathroom, so violent and prolonged had been his exertions in recovering the bather. " Descend, be stone no more!" he might have said with Paulina, when he opened the door and let out Mr. H-. The parish church of Tavistock is large. The original abbey church lay to the south of it, and was one of the finest sacred edifices in the county. It was, however, dismantled at the Reformation when the abbeys were destroyed, and the estates of Tavistock Abbey were given to the Russell family. Not one stone is left upon another of the monastic church. The vicar of Tavistock was the Rev. Edward Atkyns Bray, a tall, handsome man, of some private means, a strenuous Tory, and consequently not on the best of terms with the Duke of Bedford. He considered himself to be a great preacher. As the biographer of his wife states, in Divine service he so controlled his voice as not to be heard beyond the reading desk, so as to save it for the sermon. He was a bit of a scholar, and loved to exhibit his acquirements in the pulpit. On one occasion, having spoken of Trismegistus, as a couple of farmers were leaving the church, one said to the other, " Who was that Trismaggi-some-thing, Parson Bray spoke about ? " " Lord love y'," answered the other, " I reckon he were one of the Apostles. I cannot mind all their names." I was now passing out of boyhood, and had arrived at that most embarrassing age, when one hesitated about remaining at table with the gentlemen and the wine, after that the ladies had retired, as the conversation was sure to turn on parochial politics, or on the comparative merits of particular manures. To retire
