he had adopted the wisest course as far as health was concerned.  We had thought of calling at the abbey, but as it was forty-nine years since he had left our neighbourhood and he had died in the year 1830, we could not muster up sufficient courage to do so.  We might too have seen a fine portrait of the old gentleman, which we heard was hanging up in one of the rooms in the abbey, painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence, a friend of George IV, and President of the Royal Academy, who had also painted the portraits of most of the sovereigns of Europe reigning in his time, and who died in the same year as Sir Edmund.

Amesbury Abbey formerly belonged to the Duke of Queensberry, who made great additions to it from the plans of the celebrated architect Inigo Jones, who designed the famous Banqueting Hall at Whitehall in London and the fine gateway of St. Mary’s, Oxford.  He was known as “the English Palladio” because he adopted the style of Andrea Palladio, a celebrated Italian architect of the sixteenth century.  He was responsible for the two Palladian pillars attached to the quaint and pretty entrance gates to the Abbey Park, and for the lovely Palladian bridge that spanned the River Avon, which flowed through the grounds, forming a favourite resort for wild ducks, kingfishers, herons, and other birds.  Inigo Jones was a staunch Royalist, who suffered severely during the Civil War, and died in 1652.  The park was not a very large one, but was very pretty, and contained the famous Amesbury Hill, which was covered with fine trees on the slope towards the river; some of which had been arranged in the form of a diamond, partly concealing a cave now known as the Diamond Cave, but formerly belonging to the Druids, as all the sunrises would be visible before the intervening trees were planted.  This cave was the favourite resort of John Gay, the poet, who loved to write there.  He was a great friend of the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry, who then owned the Amesbury estate, was the author of the Beggar’s Opera, published in 1727, and lies buried in Westminster Abbey.

[Illustration:  THE CAVE IN THE DIAMOND.]

The church had been heavily restored in 1853, and one of its former vicars had been a famous man in his day according to the following account from the Gentleman’s Magazine, 1789.

INVENTOR OF THE WATER PUMP

      Until the year 1853, a slab before the Communion Table in Amesbury
  Church bore the following inscription
      In memory of the Revd.  Thomas Holland, who was for half a century
  Minister of this Parish, a small living yet he never solicited for a
      greater
  nor improved to his own advantage his marvellous talents in applying the
  powers of nature to the useful purposes of life, the most curious and
      complete
  engine which the world now enjoys for raising water being invented by
  him.

He departed the 11th day of May in the year of our Lord 1730,
Aged 84 years.