The English Church in the Eighteenth Century Part 37

[Footnote 826: iii. 73.]

[Footnote 827: ii. 441.]

[Footnote 828: See the _Life of the Rev. T. Robinson, Vicar of St.

Mary's, Leicester, and sometime Fellow of Trin. Coll., Camb._, by Rev.

E.T. Vaughan, p. 50, &c.]

[Footnote 829: See _Wilberforce, His Friends, and His Times_, by J.C.

Colquhoun, p. 102.]

[Footnote 830: Sir James Stephen, _Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography_.]

[Footnote 831: 'Mr. Wilberforce's "Practical View,"' writes Thomas Scott, 'is a most n.o.ble and manly stand for the Gospel; full of good sense and most useful observations on subjects quite out of our line, and in all respects fitted for usefulness; and coming from such a man, it will probably be read by many thousands who can by no means be brought to attend either to our preaching or writings, especially the rich.'--_Life of T. Scott_, 311.]

[Footnote 832: Newton's 'Letters to a n.o.bleman,' published in his works, were addressed to Lord Dartmouth.]

[Footnote 833: See _Life and Correspondence of Mrs. Hannah More_, by W.

Roberts, Esq., i. 395. The _Quarterly Review_ vehemently combated the notion of Dr. Johnson's conversion. In reference to the pa.s.sage in Roberts' _Life of H. More_, it said, 'This attempt to persuade us that Dr. Johnson's mind was not made up as to the great fundamental doctrine of the Christian religion, until it was enforced on him _in extremis_ by sectarian or Methodistical zeal, cannot redound to the credit of Mr.

Roberts' understanding,' &c. Those who care to enter into this bygone controversy may be referred to the _Christian Observer_ for May 1843, pp. 281-287.]

[Footnote 834: One of Newton's bon-mots was, 'The place of honour in an army is not with the baggage or among the women.']

[Footnote 835: See one of Newton's characteristically tender and sympathetic letters in answer to Hannah More's description of her spiritual state: 'What you are pleased to say, my dear madam, of the state of your mind, I understand perfectly well; I praise G.o.d on your behalf, and I hope I shall earnestly pray for you. I have stood upon that ground myself. I see what you want, to set you quite at ease; and though _I_ cannot give it you, I trust that He who has already taught you what to desire will in His own best time do everything for you and in you which is necessary to make you as happy as is compatible with our present state of infirmity and warfare; but He must be waited _on_ and waited _for_, to do this.' Hannah More had before this expressed her liking for Newton's 'Cardiphonia, though not for every sentiment or expression which it contains.' See Roberts' _Life_, i. 236.]

[Footnote 836: Roberts, ii. 260.]

[Footnote 837: See _Life of H. More_, by H. Thompson, p. 81.]

CHAPTER X.

CHURCH FABRICS AND SERVICES.

Thirty years or more of the present century had pa.s.sed before the Church awoke to put its material house in order, to improve and beautify its churches, and to improve the character of its services. Church buildings and Church services, as they are remembered by men yet of middle age, were very much the same at the close of the Georgian period as they were at its beginning. Much, therefore, of the present chapter will exhibit a state of things in many respects perfectly familiar to men who are still in the prime of life. Our great-great-grandfathers would have felt quite at home in many of the churches which we remember in our childhood. They would find now a great deal that was strange to them. Though Prayer-book and Rubrics remain the same, Church spirit in our day does not own very much in common with that which most generally prevailed during the reigns of the four Georges.

In a Church like this of England, where so much liberty of thought and diversity of opinion has ever been freely conceded to bishops and clergy as well as to its lay members, there has never failed to be, to some extent at least, a corresponding variety in the outward surroundings of public wors.h.i.+p. From the beginning of the Reformation to the present day, the three princ.i.p.al varieties of Church opinion known in modern phraseology as 'High,' 'Low,' and 'Broad' Church have never ceased to co-exist within its borders. One or other of the three parties has at times been very depressed, while another has been popular and predominant. But there has never been any external cause to prevent the revival of the one, or to make it impossible that the other should not, with changing circ.u.mstances, lose its temporary supremacy. In the eighteenth century there were, from beginning to end, men of each of these three sections. The old Puritanism was almost obsolete; but there were always Low Churchmen, not only in the earlier, but in the modern sense of the word. High Churchmen, in the seventeenth-century and Laudean meaning, were no doubt few and far between by the time the century had run through half its course. But they were not wholly confined to the Nonjuring 'remnant,' and High Churchmen of a less p.r.o.nounced type never ceased to abound. Broad Churchmen, of various shades of opinion, were always numerous. Only each and every party in the Church was weakened and diluted in force and purpose by a widespread deficiency in warmth of feeling and earnestness of conviction. Hot party feeling is no doubt a mischief; but exemption from it is dearly bought by the levelling influences of indifference, or of the lukewarmness which approaches to it. The Church of the eighteenth century, and of the Georgian period in general, was by no means deficient in estimable clergymen who lived and died amid the well-earned respect of paris.h.i.+oners and neighbours. But the tendencies of the time were in favour of a decent, unexacting orthodoxy, neither too High, nor too Broad, nor too Low, nor too strict. It may be well imagined that this feeling among the clergy should also find outward expression in the general character of the churches where they ministered, and of the services in which they officiated. A traveller interested in modes of wors.h.i.+p might have pa.s.sed through county after county, from one parish church to another, and would have found, as compared with the present time, a singular lack of variety. No doubt he would see carelessness and neglect contrasting in too many places with a more comely order in others. He would very rarely notice any disposition to develop ritual, to vary forms, and to make use of whatever elasticity the laws of the Church would permit, in order to make the externals of wors.h.i.+p a more forcible expression of one or another school of thought.

Our forefathers in the eighteenth century were almost always content to maintain in tolerable, or scarcely tolerable repair, at the lowest modic.u.m of expense, the existing fabrics of their churches. It has been truly remarked, that 'to this apathy we are much indebted; for, after all, they took care that the buildings should not fall to the ground; if they had done more, they would probably have done worse.'[838] For ecclesiastical architecture was then, as is well known, at its lowest ebb. 'Public taste,' wrote Warburton to Hurd in 1749, 'is the most wretched imaginable.'[839] He was speaking, at the time, of poetry. But poetry and art are closely connected; and it is next to impossible that depth of feeling and grandeur of conception should be found in the one, at a date when there is a marked deficiency of them in the other. There were, however, special reasons for the decline of church architecture.

It had become, for very want of exercise, an almost forgotten art. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the work of building churches had been prosecuted with lavish munificence; so much so, that the Reformed Church succeeded to an inheritance more than doubly sufficient for its immediate wants.[840] A period, therefore, of great activity in this respect was followed by one of nearly total cessation. In England no church was erected of the smallest pretensions to architectural design between the Reformation and the great fire of London in 1666, with the solitary exception of the small church in Covent Garden, erected by Inigo Jones in 1631.[841] 'During the eighty years that elapsed from the death of Henry VIII. to the accession of Charles I., the transition style left its marks in every corner of England in the mansions of the n.o.bility and gentry, and in the colleges and schools which were created out of the confiscated funds of the monasteries; but, unfortunately for the dignity of this style, not one church, nor one really important public building or regal palace, was erected during the period which might have tended to redeem it from the utilitarianism into which it was sinking. The great characteristic of this epoch was, that during its continuance architecture ceased to be a natural mode of expression, or the occupation of cultivated intellects, and pa.s.sed into the state of being merely the stock in trade of certain professional experts. Whenever this is so, '_Addio Maraviglia!_'[842] The reign of Puritanism was of course wholly unfavourable to the art; the period of laxity that followed was no less so. Even Wren, of whose comprehensive genius Englishmen have every reason to speak with pride, formed, in the first instance, a most inadequate conception of what a Christian Church should be. 'The very theory of the ground plan for a church had died out, when he constructed his first miserable design for a huge meeting-house.'[843]

Before the eighteenth century, Gothic architecture had already fallen into utter disrepute. Sir Henry Wotton, fresh from his emba.s.sies in Venice, had declared that such was the 'natural imbecility' of pointed arches, and such 'their very uncomeliness,' that they ought to be 'banished from judicious eyes, among the reliques of a barbarous age.'[844] Evelyn, lamenting the demolition by Goths and Vandals of the stately monuments of Greek and Roman architecture, spoke of the mediaeval buildings which had risen in their stead, as if they had no merits to redeem them from contempt--'congestions of heavy, dark, melancholy and monkish piles, without any proportion, use, or beauty,'[845] deplorable instances of pains and cost lavishly expended, and resulting only in distraction and confusion. Sir Christopher Wren said of the great cathedrals of the Middle Ages, that they were 'vast and gigantic buildings indeed, but not worthy the name of architecture.'[846] Even at such times there were some who were proof against the caprice of fas.h.i.+onable taste, and who were not insensible to the solemn grandeur of 'high embowed roofs,' 'ma.s.sy pillars,' and 'storied windows.'[847] Lord Lyttelton censured the old architecture as 'loaded with a multiplicity of idle and useless parts,' yet granted that 'upon the whole it has a mighty awful air, and strikes you with reverence.'[848] Henry VII.'s Chapel at Westminster was still regarded with admiration as 'that wonder of the world;'[849] and although people did not quite know what to do with their cathedrals, and regarded them rather as curiosities, alien to the times, and heirlooms from a dead past, they did not cease to speak of them with some pride. But popular taste--so far as architectural taste can be spoken of as prevalent in any definite form throughout the greater part of the last century--was all in favour of a 'Palladian' or 'Greek' style. It was a style scarcely adapted to our climate, and unfavourable to the symbolism of Christian thought, yet capable, in the hands of a master, of being very grand and imposing. Under weaker treatment the effect was grievous. There was neither manliness nor solemnity in the usual run of churches built after the similitude of 'Roman theatres and Grecian fanes.'[850] Maypoles instead of columns, capitals of no order, and pie-crust decorations--such, exclaimed Seward,[851] were the too frequent adjuncts of the newly built churches he saw about him. At the time, however, that Seward wrote, a change had already begun to show itself in many influential quarters. Even the 'correct cla.s.sicality' of Sir William Chambers,[852] the leading architect of the day, met, towards the close of the century, with by no means the same unquestioning admiration which he had received at an earlier date. There was division of opinion on fundamental questions of architectural fitness; and persons could applaud the talents of mediaeval builders without being considered eccentric. Gray, Mason, Warton, Bishop Percy, and many others, had contributed in various ways to create in England a reaction, still more widely felt in Germany, in favour of ideas which for some time past had been contemptuously relegated to the darkness of the Middle Ages. A frequent, though as yet not very discriminating, approval of Gothic[853] architecture was part of the movement. 'High veneration,' remarked Dr. Sayers, writing about the last year of the century, 'has lately been revived for the pointed style.'[854] It was one among many other outward signs of a change gradually coming over the public mind on matters concerned with the observances of religion.

An enthusiastic antiquary and ecclesiologist, whose contributions to the 'Gentleman's Magazine' of 1799 were of great service in calling attention to the reckless mischief which was often worked, under the name of improvements, in our n.o.blest churches and cathedrals, has transmitted to us a sad list of mutilations and disfigurements which had come under his observation. He has told how 'in every corner of the land some unseemly disguise, in the Roman or Grecian taste, was thrown over the most lovely forms of the ancient architecture.'[855] His indignation was especially moved by the havoc perpetrated in Westminster Abbey, sometimes by set design of tasteless innovators, often by 'some low-hovelled cutter of monumental memorials,' or by workmen at coronations, 'who, we are told, cannot attend to trifles.'[856] Carter's lamentation is more than justified by Dean Stanley, who has enumerated in detail many of the vandalisms committed during the last age in the minster under his care. What else could be expected, when it was held by those who were thought the best judges in such matters, that nothing could be more barbarous and devoid of interest than the Confessor's Chapel, and 'nothing more stupid than laying statues on their backs?' It might have been supposed that Dean Atterbury, at all events, would have had some sympathy with the workmans.h.i.+p of the past. But 'there is a charming tradition that he stood by, complacently watching the workmen as they hewed smooth the fine old sculptures over Solomon's porch, which the nineteenth century vainly seeks to recall to their places.'[857] For a list of some of the disastrous alterations and demolitions inflicted upon other cathedrals, the reader may be referred to the pages of Mr. Mackenzie Walcot.[858] Wreck and ruin seems especially to have followed in the track of Wyatt, who was looked upon, nevertheless, as a princ.i.p.al reviver of the ancient style of architecture. If cathedrals, where it might be imagined that some remains of ecclesiastical taste would chiefly linger, thus suffered, even when under the supervision of the chief architects of the period, what would have happened if, at such a time, a sudden zeal for Church restoration had invaded the country clergy?

We may be thankful, on the whole, that it was an age of whitewash.

Carter, writing of Westminster Abbey, records one thing with hearty grat.i.tude. It had not been whitewashed. It was the one religious structure in the kingdom which showed its original finis.h.i.+ng, and 'those modest hues which the native appearance of the stone so pleasantly bestows.'[859] Everywhere else the dauber's brush had been at work. He spoke of it with indignation. 'I make little scruple in declaring that this job work, which is carried on in every part of the kingdom, is a mean makes.h.i.+ft to give a delusive appearance of repair and cleanliness to the walls, when in general this wash is resorted to to hide neglected or perpetrated fractures.'[860] The stone fretwork of the Lady Chapel at Hereford,[861] the valuable wall-paintings at Salisbury,[862] the carved work of Grinling Gibbons at St. James', Westminster,[863] shared, for example, the general fate, and were smothered in lime. Horace Walpole, laughing at the City of London for employing one whom he thought a very indifferent craftsman to write their history, said he supposed that presently, instead of having books published with the imprimatur of an university, they would be 'printed as churches are whitewashed--John Smith and Thomas Johnson, Churchwardens.'[864] How few churches are there that were not earlier or later in the last century emblazoned with some such like scroll! But if whitewash conceals, it also preserves; it hides beauties to which one generation is blind, that it may disclose them the more fresh and uninjured to another which has learnt to appreciate them.

When it is said that the churches were kept in such tolerable repair that at all events they did not fall, it would appear that in many cases little more than this could be truthfully added. Ely Minster remains standing, but more by good chance, if Defoe is to be trusted, than from any sufficient care on the part of its guardians. 'Some of it totters,'

he wrote, 'so much with every gale of wind, looks so like decay, and seems so near it, that whenever it does fall, all that 'tis likely will be thought strange in it will be that it did not fall a hundred years sooner.'[865] Such an instance might well be exceptional, and no doubt was so among cathedrals;[866] but a great number of parish churches had fallen, by the middle of the century, into a deplorable state. Secker, in a charge delivered in 1750, gives a grievous picture of what was to be seen in many country churches. 'Some, I fear, have scarce been kept in necessary present repair, and others by no means duly cleared from annoyances, which must gradually bring them to decay: water undermining and rotting the foundations, earth heaped up against the outside, weeds and shrubs growing upon them ... too frequently the floors are meanly paved, or the walls dirty or patched, or the windows ill glazed, and it may be in part stopped up ... or they are damp, offensive, and unwholesome. Why (he adds) should not the church of G.o.d, as well as everything else, partake of the improvements of later times?'[867]

Bishop Fleetwood had observed forty years before,[868] that unless the good public spirit of repairing churches should prevail a great deal more, a hundred years would bring to the ground a huge number of our churches. 'And no one, said Bishop Butler, will imagine that the good spirit he has recommended prevails more at present than it did then.'[869] As for cleanliness, Bishop Horne remarked that in England, as in the sister kingdom, it was evidently a frequent maxim that cleanliness was no essential to devotion. People seemed very commonly to be of the same opinion with the Scotch minister, whose wife made answer to a visitor's request--'The pew swept and lined! My husband would think it downright popery!'[870] One can understand, without needing to sympathise with it, the strong Protestantism of Hervey's admiration for a church 'magnificently plain;'[871] but in the eighteenth century, the excessive plainness, not to say the frequent dirtiness, of so many churches was certainly owing to other causes than that of ultra-Protestantism.

After speaking of the disrepair and squalor which, although far indeed from being universal, were too frequently noticeable in the churches of the last age, it might seem a natural transition to pa.s.s on to the singularly incongruous uses to which the naves of some of our princ.i.p.al ecclesiastical buildings were in a few instances perverted. In the minds of modern Churchmen there would be the closest connection between culpable neglect of the sacred fabric, and the profanation of it by admission within its walls of the sights and sounds of common daily business or pleasure. There was something of this in the period under review. The extraordinary desecrations once general in St. Paul's belong indeed chiefly to the latter half of the 16th and the first half of the 17th centuries. Most readers are more or less familiar with the accounts given of 'Paul's Walk' in the old days,--how it was not only 'the recognised resort of wits and gallants, and men of fas.h.i.+on and of lawyers,'[872] but also, as Evelyn called it, 'a stable of horses and a den of thieves'[873]--a common market, where Shakspeare makes Falstaff buy a horse as he would at Smithfield[874]--usurers in the south aisle, horse-dealers in the north, and in the midst 'all kinds of bargains, meetings, and brawlings.'[875] Before the eighteenth century began, 'Paul's Walk' was, in all its main features, a thing of the past. Yet a good deal more than the mere tradition of it remained. In a pamphlet published in 1703, 'Jest' asks 'Earnest' whether he has been at St.

Paul's, and seen the flux of people there. 'And what should I do there,'

says the latter, 'where men go out of curiosity and interest, and not for the sake of religion? Your shopkeepers a.s.semble there as at full 'Change, and the buyers and sellers are far from being cast out of the Temple.'[876] At Durham there was a regular thoroughfare across the nave until 1750, and at Norwich until 1748, when Bishop Gooch stopped it. The naves of York and Durham Cathedral were fas.h.i.+onable promenades.[877] The Confessor's Chapel made, on occasion, a convenient playground for Westminster scholars, who were allowed, as late as 1829, to keep the scenes for their annual play in the triforium of the north transept.[878] Nevertheless 'Paul's Walk' and all customs in any way akin to it, so far as they survived into the last century, had in reality little or nothing to do with the irreligion and neglect of which the century has been sorely, and not causelessly accused. Rather, they were the relics of customs which had not very long fallen into desuetude. The time had been, and was not so very long past, when the stalls and bazaars of St. Paul's Cathedral did but ill.u.s.trate on a large scale what might be seen on certain days in almost all the churches of the kingdom. Our forefathers in the Middle Ages drew a broad line of distinction between the chancel and the nave. The former was looked upon as sanctified exclusively to religious uses; the latter was regarded rather as a consecrated house under the care and protection of the Church. It sounds somewhat like a paradox to a.s.sert that the exclusion from churches of all that is not distinctly connected with the service of religion was mainly due to the Puritans, of whose wanton irreverence in sacred buildings we hear so much. Yet this seems certainly to have been the case. Traces of the older usage lingered on, as we have seen, into the middle of the last century; but from the time of the Commonwealth they had already become exceptional anachronisms.

Before the century commenced pews had become everywhere general. In mediaeval times there had been, properly speaking, none. A few distinguished people were permitted, as a special privilege, to have their private closets furnished, very much like the grand pews of later days, with cus.h.i.+ons, carpets, and curtains. But, as an almost universal rule, the nave was unenc.u.mbered with any permanent seats, and only provided with a few portable stools for the aged and infirm. Pews began to be popular in Henry VIII.'s time, notwithstanding the protests of Sir Thomas More and others. Under Elizabeth they became more frequent in town churches. In Charles I.'s time, they had so far gained ground as to be often a source of hot and even riotous contention between those who opposed them and others who insisted on erecting them. Even in Charles II.'s reign they were exceptional rather than otherwise, and the term had not yet become limited to boxes in church. Pepys writes in his 'Diary' on February 18, 1668, 'At Church; there was my Lady Brouncker and Mrs. Williams in our pew.' On the 25th of the same month, we find the entry, 'At the play; my wife sat in my Lady Fox's pew with her.'[879] Sir Christopher Wren was not at all pleased to see them introduced into his London churches.[880] During the luxurious, self-indulgent times that followed the Restoration, private pews of all sorts and shapes gained a general footing. Before Queen Anne's reign was over they had become so regular a part of the ordinary furniture of a church, that in the regulations approved in 1712 by both Houses of Convocation for the consecrating of churches and chapels, it is specially enjoined that the churches be previously pewed.[881] Twelve years, however, later than this they were evidently by no means universal in country places. In 1725, Swift, enumerating 'the plagues of a Country Life,' makes 'a church without pews' a special item in his list.[882] But 'repewed,' had been for many years past a characteristic part of formula which recorded the church restorations of the period.[883] There are plenty of allusions in the writings of contemporary poets and essayists to the cosy, sleep-provoking structures in which people of fas.h.i.+on and well-to-do citizens could enjoy without attracting too much notice--

the Sunday due Of slumbering in an upper pew.[884]

In Swift's humorous metamorphosis--

A bedstead of the antique mode, Compact of timber many a load, Such as our ancestors did use, Was metamorphos'd into pews; Which still their ancient nature keep, By lodging folks dispos'd to sleep.[885]

Those of the more exclusive sort were often built up with tall part.i.tions, like Lady b.o.o.by's, 'in her pew, which the congregation could not see into.'[886] Sometimes they were curtained, 'sometimes filled with sofas and tables, or even provided with fireplaces;'[887] and cases might be quoted where the tedium of a long service, or the appet.i.te engendered by it, were relieved by the entry, between prayers and sermon, of a livery servant with sherry and light refreshments.[888]

Even into cathedrals c.u.mbrous ladies' pews were often introduced.

Horace Walpole tells an extraordinary story of Gloucester Cathedral in 1753. A certain Mrs. Cotton, who had largely contributed to whitewas.h.i.+ng and otherwise ornamenting the church, had taken it into her head that the soul of a favourite daughter had pa.s.sed into a robin. The Dean and Chapter indulged her in the whim, and she was allowed to keep a kind of aviary in her private seat. 'Just by the high altar is a small pew hung with green damask, with curtains of the same, and a small corner cupboard painted, carved, and gilt, for birds in one corner.'[889] In Ripon Cathedral, some of the old tabernacle work of the stalls was converted into pews.[890] Everywhere the pew system remained uncontrolled, pampering self-indulgence, fostering jealousies, and too often thrusting back the poor into mean, comfortless sittings, in whatever part of the church was coldest, darkest, and most distant from sight and hearing. Towards the end of the century its evils began to be here and there acknowledged. The population was rapidly increasing in the larger towns; and the new proprietary chapels erected to meet this increase were often commercial speculations conducted on mere principles of trade, most unworthy of a National Church. No reflecting Churchman could fail to be disgusted with a traffic in pews which in many cases absolutely excluded the poor.[891] Among the new churches there were in fact only one or two honourable exceptions to the general rule. A free church was opened at Bath, another at Birmingham;[892] it appears that all the rest of these 'Chapels of Ease' unblus.h.i.+ngly gave the lie, so far as in them lay, to the declaration of our Lord that the poor have the Gospel preached unto them. Some time had yet to elapse before improved feeling could do much towards abating the unchristian nuisance.

But energetic protests were occasionally heard. 'I would reprobate,'

wrote Mrs. Barbauld (1790) 'those little gloomy solitary cells, planned by the spirit of aristocracy, which deform the building no less to the eye of taste than to the eye of benevolence, and insulating each family within its separate enclosure, favour at once the pride of rank and the laziness of indulgence.'[893] 'It is earnestly to be wished,' remarked Dr. Sayers about the same time, 'that our churches were as free as those of the continent from these vile inc.u.mbrances.' Their injury to architectural effect was the least of their evils. They were fruitful, he said, in jealousies, and utterly discordant to the wors.h.i.+p of a G.o.d who is no respecter of persons.[894]

Of the galleries, so often enumerated in Paterson's account of London Churches (1714) among recently erected 'ornaments,' little need be said, except that they were often wholly unnecessary, or only made necessary by the great loss of s.p.a.ce squandered in the promiscuous medley of square and ill-shaped pews. It was an object of some ambition to have a front seat in the gallery. 'The people of fas.h.i.+on exalt themselves in church over the heads of the people of no fas.h.i.+on.'[895] A crowded London church in the old times, gallery above gallery thronged with people, was no doubt an impressive spectacle, not soon to be forgotten.

To many the thought of galleried churches will revive a different set of remembrances. Dusky corners, a close and heavy atmosphere, back seats for children and the scantily favoured, to which sound reached as a drowsy hum, and where sight was limited to the heads of people in their pews, to their hats upon the pillars, and perhaps an occasional half-view of the clergyman in the pulpit, seen at intervals through the interstices of the gallery supports--such are the recollections which will occur to some. Certainly they are calculated to animate even an excessive zeal for opening out churches, and creating wider s.p.a.ce and freer air.

And who does not remember some of the other special adjuncts of an old-fas.h.i.+oned church, as it had been handed down little altered from the time of our great-grandfathers? There were the half-obliterated escutcheons, scarcely less dismal in aspect than the coffin plates with which the columns of the Welsh churches were so profusely decorated. No wonder Blair introduces into his poem on 'The Grave' a picture of--

the gloomy aisles Black plastered, and hung round with shreds of 'scutcheons.[896]

And then, in the place of the ancient rood loft, was that masterpiece of rural art--

Moses and Aaron upon a church wall, Holding up the Commandments, for fear they should fall.[897]

There was the glorified record of the past deeds of parish officials, well adapted to fire the emulation of a succeeding generation--

With pride of heart, the Churchwarden surveys High o'er the belfry, girt with birds and flowers, His story wrought in capitals: 'twas I That bought the font; and I repaired the pews.[898]

There were the tables of benefactors conspicuous under the western gallery. The Lower House of Convocation in 1710 had issued special directions in recommendation of this practice. The bishops also--Fleetwood,[899] Secker,[900] and others--did not fail to enjoin it in their charges. And not without reason; for a great number of parish benefactions appear to have been lost by lapse or otherwise about the beginning of the eighteenth century. Yet smaller letters, and a less prominent position, might have served the same purpose, with less disfigurement, and less offence to the decent humility which best befits the deeds of Christian benevolence.

The great three-decked pulpit of the Georgian age is still familiar to our memories. To the next generation it will be at length a curiosity of the past. Nor must the mighty sounding-board be forgotten, impending with almost threatening bulk over the preacher's head, and adorned with the emblematic symbol of grace:--

I cast my eyes upon him, and explored The dove-like form upon the sounding h.o.a.rd.[901]

The pulpit had supplanted the old portable box-desk at the time of the Reformation, and had maintained itself in undiminished honour through all the subsequent changes. In rich London parishes much rare workmans.h.i.+p was often expended upon it. If not by its costliness, at all events by its dimensions, it was apt to throw all other church furniture into the shade. And 'in a few abnormal instances, particularly in watering-places, the rostra would even overhang the altar, or occupy a sort of gallery behind it.'[902] During the earlier part of the century, an hour-gla.s.s, in a wood or iron frame, was still the not unfrequent appendage to a pulpit.[903] In the Elizabethan period it had been general. But perhaps the Puritan preachers had not cared to be reminded that preaching had its limits; or a later generation, on the other hand, might dread the suggestion that the sermon might last the hour. At all events, as they wore out, they were not often replaced; and Bishop Kennet[904], writing in the third decade of the century, spoke of them as already beginning to be uncommon. They were chiefly to be seen in old-fas.h.i.+oned country churches, such as that where, in Gay's eclogue, the village swains followed fair Blouzelind to her burial, and listened while the good man warned them from his text, and descanted upon the uncertainty of life--

And spoke the hour-gla.s.s in her praise quite out.[905]