wall, and adorned with the escutcheons of the Oldinport family, which showed me inexhaustible possibilities of meaning in their blood-red hands, their death’s-heads and cross-bones, their leopards’ paws and Maltese crosses.  There were inscriptions on the panels of the singing-gallery, telling of benefactions to the poor of Shepperton, with an involuted elegance of capitals and final flourishes which my alphabetic erudition traced with ever-new delight.  No benches in those days; but huge roomy pews, round which devout churchgoers sat during “lessons,” trying to look everywhere else than into each others’ eyes.  No low partitions allowing you, with a dreary absence of contrast and mystery, to see everything at all moments; but tall dark panels, under whose shadow I sank with a sense of retirement through the Litany, only to feel with more intensity my burst into the conspicuousness of public life when I was made to stand up on the seat during the psalms or the singing.

Not only is this description of Shepperton Church accurate in every particular, but a subject of neighborhood gossip is made the basis of the story of “Amos Barton.”  When George Eliot was about a dozen years old a strange lady appeared at the Cotou parsonage, and became a subject of much discussion on the part of the parishioners.  Much pity was felt for the wife of the curate, an intimate friend of Marian Evans’s mother, whose poverty, seven children and poor health made her burdens far from easy.  She died not long after, and her grave may be seen at Chilvers Coton.  The Knebley Church of “Mr. Gilfil’s Love Story” is located only a short distance from Chilvers Coton, and is the chancel of the collegiate church founded by Sir Thomas de Astley in the time of Edward III.  Its spire was very high, and served as a landmark to travellers through the forest of Arden, and was called “The lanthorn of Arden.”  The spire fell in the year 1600, but was rebuilt later.  The present church was repaired by the patron of George Eliot’s father, Sir Roger Newdigate.  She describes it in the first chapter of “Mr. Gilfil’s Love Story” as—­

a wonderful little church, with a checkered pavement which had once rung to the iron tread of military monks, with coats of arms in clusters on the lofty roof, marble warriors and their wives without noses occupying a large proportion of the area, and the twelve apostles with their heads very much on one side, holding didactic ribbons, painted in fresco on the walls.

A delightful lane, overshadowed with noble trees, that ran by Griff House, the birthplace of George Eliot, led to the lodge of Arbury Hall, the home of Sir Roger Newdigate.  Arbury Hall was situated in the midst of a fine old forest, and it was originally a large quadrangular brick house.  Sir Roger rebuilt it, acting as his own architect, and made it into a modern dwelling of the commodious gothic Order.  This house and its owner appear in “Mr. Gilfil’s Love Story” as Cheverel Manor and Sir Christopher Cheverel.  In the fourth chapter the reader is told that,—­