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I understood, however, that Blanche loved me; and I am now, dear reader, Sir Terence Sackville, K. C. B., and Lady Blanche is Lady Sackville. The sun was setting over Sloperton Grange, and reddened the window of the lonely chamber in the western tower, supposed to be haunted by Sir Edward Sedilia, the founder of the Grange.
There still remain the very noble stalls which seem to assure us of the monastic use of the church, and a fine altar tomb of the fifteenth century; this on the north side. On the south are very fine sedilia and piscina. Close by is a brass to William Thanbury, the vicar here, dating from 1448.
The church is a disappointing building standing well back from the village street, mainly Perp., with a rather poor Dec. chancel; and is made still more depressing by the addition of a very debased modern N. aisle. There is a piscina and double sedilia in the chancel.
We do not know what is the state of Oxley Church now; it may have rood-loft, piscina, sedilia, all new; or it may be reformed backwards, the seats on principle turning from the Communion-table, and the pulpit planted in the middle of the aisle; but at the time when these two young men walked through the churchyard, there was nothing very good or very bad to attract them within the building; and they were passing on, when they observed, coming out of the church, what Sheffield called an elderly don, a fellow of a college, whom Charles knew.
It is true that Preston church, dedicated in honour of St Catherine, is both ancient and beautiful, and once belonged to the monastery of Christ Church in Canterbury; but neither in its channel, which must once, before the eastern window was inserted in 1862, with its single lancets and sedilia, have been extraordinarily fine, nor in the nave, is there any memory at all of St Thomas or the Pilgrims.
The double piscina and the sedilia are still in fair preservation, and we are shown the round holes in the stonework once filled with the pegs of the canons' oaken seats. In the churchyard are a few quaint epitaphs for such as delight to dwell upon the virtues of the forgotten dead. The Priory Gatehouse at the farther end is perhaps one of the most interesting buildings of its kind in existence.
Are we to suppose that a man who could live in intimate commerce with fourteen such gracious ladies as he has set there, ranged on their carved sedilia his Britomart trim and debonnair; his willowy Carita; his wimpled matron in clean white who masquerades as I know not what branch of theology; his pretty girlish Geometry of coiled and braided hair and the yet unloosed girdle of demure virginity; his maid Musica crowned with roses, and Logica, the bold-eyed and open-throated wench, hand to hip is this the man for sententiousness?
An antique Italian fountain occupied a niche in the opposite wall, and on either side were sedilia flanked by bay-trees in tubs and two or three fine specimens of the Japanese dwarf oak. A bas-relief in plaster of the Elgin marbles ran friezelike the full length of the party wall, and fixed immediately above the fountain niche the terrible mask of the Medusa face looked down upon us.
The gaming-tables have constant visitors; there, thousands are daily and nightly lost and won; parties even sit down to try their luck round the outside of the door as well as in the room:— “Vestibulum ante ipsum primisque in faucibus aulæ Luctus et ultrices, posuere sedilia curæ.”
Beyond the river a giant shadow looming through the mist reminded him of the Roman Colisseum seen in a like aspect, the resemblance being accentuated in his imagination by the Stadium's vast silence, by its rows upon rows of ghostly gray sedilia looking down on a haunted, empty ring.
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