It is not to be
supposed, however, that this old-fashioned mode of punishment is still
in vogue among the good people of Whitnash. The vicar of the parish has
antiquarian propensities, and had probably dragged the stocks out of
some dusty hiding-place, and set them up on their former site as a
curiosity.
I disquiet myself in vain with the effort to hit upon some
characteristic feature, or assemblage of features, that shall convey to
the reader the influence of hoar antiquity lingering into the present
daylight, as I so often felt it in these old English scenes. It is only
an American who can feel it; and even he begins to find himself growing
insensible to its effect, after a long residence in England. But while
you are still new in the old country, it thrills you with strange
emotion to think that this little church of Whitnash, humble as it
seems, stood for ages under the Catholic faith, and has not materially
changed since Wickcliffe's days, and that it looked as gray as now in
Bloody Mary's time, and that Cromwell's troopers broke off the stone
noses of those same gargoyles that are now grinning in your face. So,
too, with the immemorial yew-tree: you see its great roots grasping hold
of the earth like gigantic claws, clinging so sturdily that no effort of
time can wrench them away; and there being life in the old tree, you
feel all the more as if a contemporary witness were telling you of the
things that have been.
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