The Living Age Volume 185 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1890 Excerpt: ... village seemed composed of a straggling row of one-storied grey stone houses, the same color as the stone walls that separated the few fields enclosed from the surrounding waste, and as the little bridges over the beck that ran down one side of the grey, wide street. Everything was grey. The church, the low tower of which I could see at a little distance, seemed to have been built of the same stone; so was the parsonage when I came up to it, accompanied on my way by a mob of rough, uncouth children, who eyed me and Brian with half-defiant curiosity. The clergyman was at home, and after-a short delay I was admitted. Leaving Brian in charge of my drawing materials I followed the servant into a low panelled room in which at a latticed window a very old man was sitting. The morning light fell, on his white head bent low over a litter of papers and books. "Mr. Er?" He said, looking up slowly, with one finger keeping his place m a book. "Blake." "Blake," he repeated after me, and was silent. I told him that I was an architect; that I had come to study a fresco in the crypt of his church; and asked him to let me take the keys. "The crypt," he said, pushing up his spectacles and peering hard at me. "The crypt has been closed for thirty years. Ever since "and lie stopped short "I should be much obliged for the keys," I said again. He shook his head. "No," he said. "No one goes in there now." "It is a pity," I remarked, "for I have come a long way with that one object," and I told him about the paper I had been asked to read, and the trouble I was taking with it. He became interested. "Ah 1" he said, laying down his pen, and removing his finger from the page...