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have noticed it for a church on approaching: but when he has
reached it, there is the porch, and the little graveyard,
with a few tombs, and the spreading yew, encircled by the
seat of stones and turf where the early comers sit and rest
till the bell calls them in. A little dial, on a whitened
post in the middle of the enclosure, tells the time to the
neighbours who have no clocks. Just outside the wall is a
white cottage, so humble that the stranger thinks it cannot
be the parsonage: yet the climbing roses and glittering
evergreens, and clear lattices, and pure uncracked walls,
look as if it might be. He walks slowly past the porch, and
sees some one who tells him that it is indeed Robert
Walker's dwelling, and courteously invites him in to see the
scene of those life-long charities. Here it was that the
distant parishioners were fed on Sundays with broth, for
which the whole week's supply of meat was freely bestowed.
Hither it was that in winter he sent the benumbed children,
in companies, from the school in the church, to warm
themselves at the single household fire, while he sat by the
altar all the school hours, keeping warmth in him by the
exercise of the spinning wheel. But the story is too well
known, as it stands in Wordsworth's works, to need further
celebration here: too well known, we should think, not to
induce tourists to walk two miles from Ulpha Kirk and back
again, to visit the homes, in life and in death, of Robert
Walker. There are changes even here. There is a
school-house, warmer in winter than the church: and there is
a decline in the number of attendants at church. The
Wesleyan
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