The clearer my notions on these points became, they only made me more passionately long for the privilege of joining in that social service, from which it seemed that we alone, of all the inhabitants of the land, were debarred; and when the wind was in that point which favoured the sound of the distant bells of St. Mary’s to be heard over the great moor which skirted our house, I have stood out in the air to catch the sounds which I almost devoured; and the tears have come in my eyes, when sometimes they seemed to speak to me almost in articulate sounds, to come to church, and because of the great moor which was between me and them I could not come; and the too tender apprehensions of these things have filled me with a religious melancholy.  With thoughts like these I entered into my seventh year.

And now the time was come, when the great moor was no longer to separate me from the object of my wishes and of my curiosity.  My father having some money left him by the will of a deceased relation, we ventured to set up a sort of a carriage—­no very superb one, I assure you, ladies; but in that part of the world it was looked upon with some envy by our poorer neighbours.  The first party of pleasure which my father proposed to take in it, was to the village where I had so often wished to go, and my mother and I were to accompany him; for it was very fit, my father observed, that little Susan should go to church, and learn how to behave herself, for we might some time or other have occasion to live in London, and not always be confined to that out of the way spot.

It was on a Sunday morning that we set out, my little heart beating with almost breathless expectation.  The day was fine, and the roads as good as they ever are in those parts.  I was so happy and so proud.  I was lost in dreams of what I was going to see.  At length the tall steeple of St. Mary’s church came in view.  It was pointed out to me by my father, as the place from which that music had come which I have heard over the moor, and had fancied to be angels singing.  I was wound up to the highest pitch of delight at having visibly presented to me the spot from which had proceeded that unknown friendly music; and when it began to peal, just as we approached the village, it seemed to speak. Susan is come, as plainly as it used to invite me to come, when I heard it over the moor.  I pass over our alighting at the house of a relation, and all that passed till I went with my father and mother to church.

St. Mary’s church is a great church for such a small village as it stands in.  My father said it was a cathedral, and that it had once belonged to a monastery, but the monks were all gone.  Over the door there was stone work, representing saints and bishops, and here and there, along the sides of the church, there were figures of men’s heads, made in a strange grotesque way:  I have since seen the same sort of figures in the round tower of