The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 118: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

CHAPTER VIII THE VAULT IN THE CHURCH THE scene now changes to one of those beautiful little vil- lages which are to be found in Westmoreland, where the hills protect the dwellings from the cold winds of winter, and where lakes and rivulets reflect in the summer-time the trees that stand upon their banks. The village to which we would now particularly direct the attention of our readers was sit- uated in a valley; it was more than half-embowered by large trees, whose giant arms, covered with verdure, stretched over the cottages which formed the chief portion of that little assemblage of habitations. It was intersected by a stream, which, after turning the wheel of a water-mill, passed under a rudely constructed wooden bridge, but all in appropriate keeping with the picturesque simplicity of the scene; and thence the rivulet pursued its course, embracing with its sinuosity two sides of the churchyard, and flowing on through the meadows until its serpentine form was lost in the dis- tance. To this village it suits our purpose to give a fictitious name, and we will therefore, with the reader’s permission, denominate it Woodbridge. The church—standing in the midst of its sacred ground crowded with tombstones, many of which were old enough, and showed the remains of quaint and uncouth sculpturing, the others indicating the resting-places of the more recently deceased — was about a quarter of a mile apart from the village itself; and, as we have already said, the churchyard on two sides stretched down to the bank of the river, which there made an abrupt curve. Close by was the parsonage, — a small old-fashioned house, built of bricks of a deep, dingy red, with a little wooden portico, supported by two thin pillars, and there was a tolerably large garden attached to 99 EOMINIGIOOKS (CO)