“Fear God
Honour the King
Do good to all men.”
Probably it dates from about the year of Alton Workhouse, from the times when kites and ravens abounded, and thrived on the corpses of men who were hanged for a little theft committed out of necessity or love of sport. The fear of God must have been a mighty thing to bring forth such laws and still more the obedience to them. And yet, thanks to our capacity for seeing the past and the remote in rose-colour, that age frequently appears as at least a silver age; perhaps even our own will appear German silver. I confess I did not think about the lad who was hanged for a hare when I caught sight of the church at Orcheston St. George, but rather of some imaginary, blissful time which at least lacked our tortures, our great men, our shame and conscience. It is a flint church with an ivied tower standing on terms of equality among thatched farm buildings and elms. The church was stifling, for a stove roared among dead daffodils and moss and the bodies of Ambrose Paradice, gent, dead since 1727, and Joan his wife, and the mere tablet of John Shettler of Elston, who died at Harnham (“from the effects of an accident”) on December 6, 1861, when he was fifty-two, and went to Hazelbury Brian in Dorset to be buried. Outside, the sun was almost as warm on the daisies and on the tombstone of Job Gibbs, who died in 1817 at the age of sixty-four, and proclaimed, or the sexton did for him,—
“Ye living men the Tomb survey
Where you must quickly dwell.
Mark how the awful summons sounds
In ev’ry funeral knell.
Give joy or sorrow, care or pain,
Take life and blends away,