I give, theft Books
for. tAe.foHnttmg'if aColitgt in ittj Cllbiip

'mLE«¥MHYEi&sirinf«

fre ilSlfrtrrc!}'

per.

Le-ech, Joseph
SUPPLEMENTAL PAPERS

liV THE

MAKING THE FOURTH COLLECTION FROM THE
SAME SOURCE.

Bristol :
WILLIAM GEORGE'S SONS.
1888.

Butler & Tanner,
Tiie Selwood Printing Works,
Fromet and London.

Eo the fHcmorg of
HI? FRIEND AND BROTHEE PILGRIM,
ROBERT PHIPPEN,
OF BEDMINSTEE,
THE CHUECH-GOER OF FOEMER DAYS NOW DEDICATES
THE KECOED OF A PLEASANT ENTEEPEISE
WHICH OWED MUCH TO HIS HELPFUL
AND KINDLY COMPANIONSHIP.

PREFACE.

mHE three little volumes— the " Bristol Church-Goer,"
-*- and " Rural Rides " — being out of print for several
years, I am not unfrequently asked by friends to publish
another edition of them. I do not do so, because I think
the number of copies issued in the first instance were
enough to meet any interest taken in productions of a
passing and to some extent of a personal character.
Other papers, however, of much the same kind — and
¦which, though not strictly belonging to the original series,
treated of like subjects in a like spirit — subsequently ap
peared from the same pen. These I now for the first
time pnt together in book shape. I thus hope to partially
meet the wishes of those who have paid me the compli
ment of asking- for a reprint of the three former volumes,
by giving them a fourth, in which the matter (at least in
a collective form) is new.
I may add that as the following sketches were written
at intervals, and often widely apart— some of them as far
back as nearly forty years — it may be found when they
are brought into juxtaposition, that the same idea, if not
anecdote, is repeated. If so, I hope I may for the reason
assigned claim the considerate indulgence of the friendly
reader.

x Preface.
It is hardly necessary to mention, what is perhaps
obvious from their nature and contents, that the several
notes now supplied were written and appended while
these pages were being prepared for press.
The writer of
"THE CHURCH-GOER."
Bristol, 1888.

CONTENTS.

Amen 1
A Church in an Unfashionable Quarter 5
Old Temple Church, Bristol 11
An Iron Church 17
A Tumble-Down Old Church . 20
Joseph Wolff at St. Werburgh's . 25
A Church off the Downs 32
Leigh Church . 36
Archdeacon Denison at Home 41
Bisnop Ellicott at St. Stephen's, Bristol . . 47
A Morning's Service at the Mayor's Chapel 53
The Vicar of Kempsford amongst the Kalendaries 59
An " Inverted Prophecy " 66
The Churches of Weston-super-Mare . 73
Up-Hill Work . 78
Burnham Church 81
A Rural Ride . 91
A Little Somersetshire Church . 97
A Somersetshire " St. Roque's " 103
Service amongst the Sand-Hills 109
Llandaff . - - 114
A Welsji Church 120
A Lord Bishop's Enthronization by Proxy. 125
Bristol Cathedral and its Bishops 130
Dr. Baring, the New Bishop, at St. Matthias 135
A Combative Colonial Bishop 110
On a Few Old Bristol Prelates:
" The Weeping Prophet " 145
The Smoking Bishop . 151
The Ambassador Bishop of Bristol . 154
"The Hunting Bishop" of Bristol . 161
A Chapter on an old Chapter . . 168
A Second Chapter on an Old Chapter 17t
A Third Chapter on an Old Chapter . 1#>

THE CHUECH-GOEE,

%mnx.
"f\K< if theyare going to turn this into an 'Amen'
\J church, I shan't come here," said an old lady, after
morniug prayers. The observation was made "promis
cuously," as the phrase is, just as we went out at the
south porch ; and as she was a neighbouring pew-holder,
and nobody in particular was addressed, I accepted the
observation as intended for myself amongst others, so I
answered, " I fear, madam, until they make a very sweep
ing revision of the prayers, it will be impossible for you
to discover a church where ' Amens ' do not greatly
abound in the service. I have never counted them, but
I should think there are at least a hundred of these
solemn interjections to be eliminated from the prayers,
before yon can get a liturgy to your liking."
"I do not mean the said Amens, but the sung ones, as
I dare say you know very well, sir," was her promjDt and
almost sharp reply.
I must plead guilty to having quite understood her,
though, for a momentary purpose, I affected ignorance.
"I mean the chanted Amens," she repeated, "the High
Church Amens; and if they are going to make a Puseyite
church of this, I'll have my hassocks and cushion away ! "
Our church a Puseyite church ! The very suspicion
or suggestion of it was almost amusing. No one ever saw
a candlestick or a symbolical altar cloth in Christ Church,
Clifton, our canopy and red-baize covering for the entrance
steps on marriage occasions being the only extra ecclesias
tical or ornamental furniture we boast of. Puseyite,
indeed ! you never certainly hear the phrase in a sermon
with us ; but then, on an average, once a month, we express
B

2 The Church-Goer.
our opinion of Popery very strongly from the pulpit, and
do not shrink, when ' opportunity offers, to administer a
parenthetical poke at its imitation amongst ourselves ; so
that the only scrap or sign of scarlet about the church is
the "swell" step cloth already alluded to. But our parson
is a plucky man,* frank and honest as the day; and though
I should as soon expect to see him walk up the aisle in a
cocked hat and feathers, as permit any mediaeval haber
dashery within the walls to offend people, or open his
pulpit to a forged friar, who would make our churches
places in which to act "picture charades"; still, if there
is really an innocent or meritorious custom or form against
which nothing can be urged, only that another party were
the first to adopt or revive it, he is not afraid of a shadow —
afraid to sanction its introduction — and to see its use apart
from its prestige. Thus he assented to the offertory as
the most successful way of raising subsidies for the poor
of other parishes ; and when the alms-dishes carried round
startled some nervous folk, who did not feel they had
enough security against the Scarlet Lady in the point-
blank Protestantism of the Vicar, he consented, sooner than
let the non-contents excite themselves out of all charity,
to give up the from-pew-to-pew collections. So that the
churchwardens have since had to stand at the doors, plate
in hand, and endure a chronic cold in the head as a con
cession to tender consciences.
The " Amen" intoned in some churches — chiefly High —
at the end of each hymn, succeeded the offertory ; but it
was equally short-lived. I believe it only survived the
second Sunday on which it was used, and which was that
whereon my old lady neighbour expressed her discontent
in so lively a fashion. I need hardly say that "Amen" —
a word of solemn assurance, so often used by our Lord to
give additional force to His Divine dicta — cannot be other
wise than good, whether said or sung, and it always ter
minated the worship of the Primitive Christians at Rome,
where, as St. Jerome tells us, it sounded " like a thunder
clap" from thousands of voices. It has, however, like a
great many other good things, come to be considered a
* The incident related, occurred in the incumbency of the late
Eev. Mourant Brock.

Amen, 3
party sign, because first revived by a party. But party
or no party, it has a fine and impressive, almost sublime
effect at the close of a hymn or psalm, making a suitable
and solemn finish to what otherwise often seems abrupt.
However, it was manifest from the sequel, to say nothing
of the old lady's unfounded anger, that a good many of
the congregation of the church did not like it, — would
not have it. in fact. It sounded to them like an echo from
the incense-clouded aisles of St. Peter's, like a prolonged
tone from the private choir of the Scarlet Lady !
The first Sunday it was used, no one expecting it, all sat
down at the close of the hymn, so the organ gallery had
it all to itself; but anywhere else, save in church, it would
have been amusing to watch the curious expressions of
surprise with which people turned to one another. You,
could at once have told to what "school" your neighbour
belonged, according as pleasure or displeasure dashed the
facial expression ; but judging from the visible signs in
my own quarter, I should say that ours was by no means art
"Amen corner." The elderly gentlewoman before alluded
to made no secret of her disapprobation ; but the dissen
tients reserved their demonstrations until the second psalm,
and then there was something of strong protest, which no
one could avoid seeing in the way in which they " flumped"
down on their cushions, as much as to say, "We'll have
none of that, Dr. Pusey ; you are not going to 'Amen' us
over to Rome in this musical fashion." In proportion to
the plainness of their protest was the significant support
which the High folk gave the movement. Erect and
stubborn as monuments, some half-dozen of them stood
up in my neighbourhood, and with trembling tones and
flushed cheeks, as though prepared to be martyrs to any
amount, they did what they could to swell the tone.
But they were clearly a small minority.
"Few, but undismayed, they stood."
Good gracious ! I thought, what a pity people will not
have common sense. Here is a beautiful word of sacred
affirmation they would turn into a watchword of party —
a battle cry ; but as I cannot regard it in that light, and
am conceited enough to fancy myself one of the half-

4 The Church-Goer.
ozen reasonable people in the church — what am I to do ?
I stand up they will call me "high," if Isit down, "low,"
and high and low are literal terms, judging from the pos
tures of parties ; yet I consider myself neither one nor
the other, but a rare mean between both. Such is my
vanity ! Mine was the difficulty of a moderate man, a
situation which a person who tries to be sensible will
sometimes find himself in. There was no via media here,
but a crooked position between erect and sitting — an
attitude of almost suspended animation, which, if not
ridiculous, is certainly very uncomfortable. Yet it was
all the physical demonstration left me; and, by way of
compromise, I bent myself as nearly as possible to an
angle of 45°. I was thus driven to a mathematical illus
tration of my own peculiar and intermediate school of
theology. As I have said, however, we had the "Amen"
but for two Sundays. Our worthy incumbent, as Evan
gelical as Charles Simeon himself, was still too sensible
to see anything but suitability in it as a musical termi
nation; but he loved peace better than intoned Amens, and,
as the opponents were clearly the most numerous, he gave
way, not probably before he was well peppered with angry
notes, signed or unsigned, and had to stand a sharp fire of
protests during his parish visits. On the third Sunday,
those who stood up waiting the sonorous finish to the
first hymn were disappointed. They waited in vain for
the sound, and were only convinced that it was not to
come when the last echoes of the organ swell died away
into complete silence ; and then they slowly sat down,
depressed and sorrowful.*
Leaving the church, I got quickly out of the way of
my old lady friend and neighbour ; for there was a toss
of triumph in her head and an air of exultation about her,
as she made for her chair, which said as plainly as possible,
" We have conquered, carried the day ; Dr. Pusey is de
feated, dispersed, driven to the winds." Von victis. It was
not safe or prudent to come in her way — she was danger
ous ; so I wisely took to flight, reserving my views on the
subject for a future time.
* The " Amen" is now in full tone in the church, and a pew-to-pew
alms bag collection prevails. — Ed.

^ (Cburtlj in an (tlnfasIjicmaMe (Quarter.
ICAXXOT say what the surprise of those ladies and
gentlemen might have been, who, coming from the
country, quitted their carriages in Broadmead, and
picked their steps through the narrow ways of the Pithay
to the newly-built and about-to-be-consecrated church of
Saint Bartholomew's; but doubtless their sense of wonder
was much increased when the curious and curiosity-loving
antiquarian told them of a time within "reach of record,"
which saw this same dim and begrimed quarter a smiling
collection of suburban gardens and summer-houses,
watered by a pleasant winding river, with willow seats
upon its grassy banks. I candidly confess my imagin
ation is not lively enough to skip backwards four or
five hundred years, and realize this transformation ; for,
between the narrow streets — overhung by soot-stained
gables of antique houses, from whose battered little lead-
framed casements queer articles of apparel hung out to
dry — and the rustic picture of primrosed hedges which the
antiquarian romancer draws, there appears to be hardly a
wider and more startling interval than between the child
Samuel, as we have seen him painted and moulded, kneel
ing, with head upturned and clustering curls resting on
his shoulders, and the same Samuel, a sightless, ruthless
old man, with the red sword in his hand, hewing Agag in
pieces — a fearfully appalling tableau, which, by the way,
I never read of without thinking of the child, "girded with
a linen ephod," ministering before the Lord.
TreadiDg the narrow maze of streets to the newly
raised church on a week-day, by rag and bone shops,
with here and there a depot for the sale of second-hand
boots and shoes which are ranged in rows outside the

6 The Church-Goer.
tenement, or brazen-faced young women, standing at
doorways which, like that of Dis, described by the classic
poet, " remain open night and day," you come to the
conclusion that the region is one, however suitable for a
church, not favourable to the theory of those who have
been recently advocating clerical residence in the central
city parishes of Bristol. Not that I desire to give the
neighbourhood a very bad name ; but the network of
narrow streets which lie down in the hollow behind
Wine Street, and between that great thoroughfare and
Quay Street, is a kind of Alsatia in its way — inhabited
by a strange, miscellaneous population, native and foreign.
Out of it, in the early morning of the working week-day,
may be seen emerging with his coffee-tin and breakfast in
hand the sturdy labourer, his clothes raddled with red
clay, who will soon disappear from sight down one of
yonder tunnels, with which the Board of Health are now
puncturing our streets. Or the frocked haulier's man,
with his brass-bound waggon whip, departs for his
stables, with a passing salutation to the policeman, whose
step has been heard measured as a pendulum all through
the long night on the narrow pavements. Later in the
day, when the city clocks are striking ten or eleven,
small parties of German band boys, in mittens and
worsted mufflers, come forth out of these courts and alleys,
carrying their instruments, that will all day resound on
the terraces and crescents and in the parks of Clifton, with
theairs of fatherland that they practised the whole previous
evening in their dingy lodgings, while sempstress girls
sat and worked in doorways to listen to " The Last Rose
of Summer" or "The Swallows homeward fly."
I don't say that the picture of the Pithay is always
so satisfactory or peaceful. Up those "cribbed and
cabined " streets there are often discordant sounds. The
shrill accents of women quarrelling are so frequently
heard that you fancy a female fight — the policeman look
ing cautiously on from the head of the next street, not
half liking to come too close to their sharp talons — is a
standing institution of the quarter, which also contributes
from its inhabitants in no small degree to those " wor
shippers of nature," with bird-cages and bulldogs, such

A Church in an Unfashionable Quarter. 7
as pass on Sabbath mornings up the lane in which Mr.
Spurgeon lives. My desire, however, is to describe the
locality as it appeared a few Sunday evenings ago, when,
being in the neighbourhood, I availed myself of the oppor
tunity to attend service in the newly erected church,
which possesses some peculiar interest from the fact that
it is the only one that has been built in the central or
ancient city since the Reformation.
Through the intricate little streets which form the
quarter, and are composed of houses that speak of a do
mestic architecture very different from that which now
prevails, I could hear the single bell calling to " even
song " (that pretty word, like a little melody itself,
though a trifle Popish, I don't feel disposed to part with)
for some time before I saw the slated bell turret in which
it hangs. The sound was a novel one in these regions,
and, when it first tinkled forth, it must have awoke echoes
that had been asleep for centuries. "Well," thought I,
as I passed a couple of labouring men, who, in shirt
sleeves — the deshabille of the working classes — leant
against their door-posts and smoked, "if the bell does
nothing else, it seems to soothe these Sunday-resting sewer-
diggers, and to enhance the tranquil enjoyment of their
pipe of peace." I have no doubt that neither these mus
cular earth-borers, unyoked for one day from their heavy
work, nor the old women who, seated on their haunches
at opposite doorways, gossipped to each other, helped to
swell the congregation of plain decorous people with
which I subsequently found the new church fairly filled.
Nor, probably, did they " think, " with good ¦George
Herbert, that " When the bells did chime,
'Twas angels' music."
Still, I would by no means say that the neighbourhood,
the sounds and associations of the new church, which
seems to have crushed itself in — Gothic doorway, bell
turret, and all — between these squalid though quaint old
tenements and that high, black, heavy warehouse, were
without their humanizing, if not spiritualizing effects, even
upon those who yet have not learnt to go inside the sacred
walls. The example of a decent, decorous congregation

8 The Church-Goer.
passing twice or thrice on Sunday by their doorways to
prayer may not be wholly lost upon them. Hearing that
little bell at stated hours, they will come to like it, even
as a time-marker at first, and by-and-by, perhaps, as
something more. The streets are narrow, and the pro
jecting houses almost touch each other at top, so that
close neighbourhood, if nothing else, must compel the in
mates to hear some portion of the public worship. The
simple cadences of the psalm tune and the solemn swell
of the organ will escape through the west entrance and
find its way in at those open little lattice windows, and
they who have ears to hear cannot help hearing what may
touch some, if it were only by reminding them of similar
sounds which they were familar with in younger days,
and amongst village homes. Never mind if that pallid,
unshorn journeyman shoemaker, who has not washed
himself since he had been out at early morning to cut a
green turf on the Downs for the lark which carols in the
cage hung from that shattered lattice window — I say,
never mind if he only peeps in at the congregation a few
minutes, and then walks out again. Perhaps some, let us
call it, fancy has got hold of him, in these few seconds.
He has heard the words, " I will arise, and go to my
Father," and some Sunday morning — it may be weeks or
months hence — they will perhaps make him shave him
self and take a seat just near the door for half an hour
or so. Never you mind, too, that great awkward navvy
making a noise with his hob-nailed shoes, and causing
the congregation to look round. Don't you despair of
him ; that fellow once, when a boy in a Wiltshire or
Somersetshire hamlet, pattered in with other boys and
the schoolmaster to the old church, and pulled his yellow
forelock, and " made a leg " in salutation to the parson as
he passed him on the road. He has dug and fought and
drank perhaps a good deal since those young days ; but
there's a human heart inside that red-earth soiled smook,
and the sentence or two that he heard just after he
lounged in, discomposing the sextoness of St. Bartholo
mew's, fell on his ears with a sound not altogether un
familiar to him. Nay, even that bold, painted-faced girl,
with the brass earrings and the green dress, I would not

A Church in an Unfashionable Quarter. 9
say her case was hopeless ; for, if nothing else, the psalm
tune which she hears is no stranger to her ; and by the
time the second verse was gone through, she could sing it
if she liked, as well as sb^ did in the girls' class of her
native village school, before she came to Bristol to look
for domestic service and, as Carlyle says, " found devil-
service instead."
A place of worship newly planted in such a locality will
have its occasional disturbances and annoyances, if it
were only from the uncouth curiosity of the untaught
dwellers in the region ; but better put up with occasional
inconveniences of this kind, than call in the police to quell
them. It is a sort of missionary work, in which the
church and the clergy win their way rather by gentle
bearing and forbearing than by the assertion of right; and
where a mild word from the parson may Secure civility,
better let that blue-coated functionary pace by on the
other side, without invoking his aid. Por the same
reason, I am not fond of reading penal or legal notices on
church doors, to the effect that " the police have strict
orders to apprehend " anybody who does so and so ; or
'¦ the utmost rigours of the law " will be employed to
punish parties offending in such and such particulars.
They are hard and formal, and suggestive rather of the
prison than the poor man's church. One of the prettiest
new churches in our neighbourhood (I may as well
candidly say at once, I allude to St. Mary Magdalen, at
Stoke Bishop) has upon its entrance gateway, in large
letters, " Any one found trespassing in this churchyard
will be prosecuted." This staring, prominent, permanent
notice had about it, I thought, something harshly in
harmonious with the surrounding scenery and associations.
Upon the softly beautiful landscape, the bell calling to
prayer, the natural repose of the spot, this abrupt threat
of pains and penalties seemed as it were to grate. It is
like thrusting the pitiless law in the face of those who
are going to hear the gospel. We must not forget that
the most famous elegy in our language was " written in a
country churchyard," and that had such a notice as
illustrates the iron gate at Stoke Bishop been attached to
that of Stoke Pogis, it would probably have scared away

10 Ihe Church-Goer.
the sensitive Gray, and we should never have had the
music of " the curfew tolling the knell of parting day " ;
for I am sure the fear of the parish constable's hand
being placed on his shoulder, as he stood by some moss-
grown headstone, would have been fatal to the soft
tranquillity which enabled the poet to breathe forth his
evening's musings in these matchless lines : —
" Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds."
However, Gray had only the " ploughman ' ' plodding home
ward, and not a policeman or legal prosecutions, in his
mind, when be stepped over the stile of the little Berk
shire graveyard.
But, back from the sunny green slopes of Sneyd to the
peopled purlieus of the Pithay. There was not much
money to build the church of St. Bartholomew's, and
there was no Bristol Castle to contribute every tenth
stone to its construction, as it is said was the case
when the civic fortress and the mother church were
being built at the same time ; but the brave zeal of
the Incumbent of St. James's * fought out all that was
necessary for the erection, and, I believe, for the endow
ment also ; and on the day it was consecrated, he and his
brother trustees handed over to the present Incumbent a
church suitable in every respect, and wonderfully light
and pleasant, for the dark and crowded corner into which
they had to crush it. A decent and attentive congregation
of plain townspeople, many of them of the mechanic class,
frequent the services, which are well and decorously per
formed, and by-and-by, I have no doubt, will draw in
more and more of the incongruous population from sun
less court and alley, with which it is surrounded; for, hid
away from general gaze, the young clergyman of such a
church must be content to carry on his obscure but im
portant labours, looking for other reward than that which
meets the pet of the public platform or the popular
pulpiteer of some fashionable or much-frequented place
of worship. * The late Kev. W. Bruce.

(LHir (Temple oTbuvcb, Bristol.
"It need hardly be premised that the following was written before
the (comparatively) recent repairs and restoration of the church of
the Templars took place.]
HAS old Temple Church no friends, in these days of
restorations, to suggest that something should be done
for it ? Don't, good reader, pass along the order to button
pockets : I am not going to ask for subscriptions. I have
no little pass-book in my hand in which to enter names,
or pencil ready pared to inscribe them. There is an old
song that says, —
" Of all the trades a-going, begging is the best ;
For when a man is tired, he may sit down and rest."
Nevertheless, and notwithstanding the latter advantage,
which is not to be despised in days when all the world
appears to be in a hot haste, I don't like begging. I never
tried it for myself, but have for others ; and it is harder
than working, and not so productive. So I am not going
to beg for Temple, or put out an appeal : I only just ven
ture to suggest that if there be any wealthy and zealous
ecclesiologists, who would like to undertake an interesting
task, here is an object worthy of their attention, viz., the
church of " the Poor of the Holy Cross," as the fighting
priests first called themselves.
Two or three months ago, I happened to be in the
neighbourhood one Sunday evening, when the bells were
ringing for service, and as I had not entered under the
leaning tower for nearly twenty years, I embraced the
opportunity of attending prayers once more within the
old walls. The tower and the chancel with its two side
aisles — one of them, I believe, being the ancient Weavers'
n

12 The Church-Goer.
Chapel — are the oldest as well as the best parts of the
building; but the size and loftiness of the pillared nave and
its breadth, taking in the two aisles, are really very effec
tive and commanding, though little enriched. It must
have afforded great scope for processions in the old Popish
times ; and though, no doubt, there is neither stick nor
stone of the present structure contemporaneous with the
Red Cross Knights, there is something suggestive of the
grand and gaunt chivalry of the fighting and praying
brotherhood about it.
Up, up, up the long aisle I followed the sextoness. I
passed loose box after loose box (as the High Church
folk call them) ; plenty of room in each, many of them
not containing a single person. But the good woman
would not let me rest or go into one of them, and still
led the way (what she took me for I cannot think, perhaps
a Town-Councillor or a J.P.), until she landed me in a
pew just by the entrance to the chancel, and then she
started on her long journey back to the west entrance.
When one has been for a long time used to the thronged
modern churches of Clifton and Cotham, it has a curious
effect, service in one of the ancient, half-deserted, his
torical churches of Bristol. The appearance of the place,
the character of the congregation, the atmosphere, so to
speak, of other days that seems to linger in the edifice,
produce thoughts and sensations one cannot describe. As
the bells kept ringing for some time after I entered, and
one tradesman after another with his family came tardily
dropping in, strange reveries and odd traditions of this
old Temple Church occurred to my mind. Perhaps four
hundred and fifty years are the utmost antiquity any part
of the present structure can boast of, but there can be
little doubt that the Knights of the Cross had an hospi
tal and church here, or somewhere adjoining, at a much
earlier date, and the conduit on Knowle Hill that supplied
their religious house with water is still in operation. A
local chronicle, under the date 1 145, says, " Temple Church
founded by the Templars about this time."
But it is not so much of the Knights Templars you
think as of the people and parish of Temple — what they
were some couple of hundred years ago, socially and sub-

Old Temple Church, Bristol. 13
stantially, and what they are now. Nothing perhaps
more marks the difference in the quality of its residents,
than the fact that the grandfather of Colston the philan
thropist lived in the street, I believe nearly opposite the
church, and had for his neighbour some of the principal
members of the Corporation and leading citizens of Bris
tol. Mrs. Colston (as we have all heard the story a hun
dred times) was visiting her parents when she was seized
with the pains of labour, so that she could not be carried
back to the great house in Small Street where her husband
lived, but was here put to bed in a snug little latticed
chamber overlooking the street. There are still to be seen
in Temple Street two or three antique porches, where the
carved wooden pillars project on the flag ways. The popu
lar notion is that these indicate the abodes of an alder
man in other times; but I doubt if there is more foundation
for it than the fact that there appear in the Corporation
books entries, in which one or two members of the Cham
ber, resident in the parish, undertake to pay the city a
shilling a year for permission to place these same pillars
in the public thoroughfare. Over my head, indeed, as I
sat all alone in my glory in the great pew by the entrance
of the chancel, was proof of the former importance and
prosperity of the parish in the long list of Mayors it
had furnished. Fast fading out, the gilded letters in
which it is written being barely discernible, is one name
which stands in the page of our national history, — not,
perhaps, for anything to make his descendants particularly
proud of it, but still it is an historic name, — that of the
fierce Tory Sir John Knight, whom Lord Macaulay does
the honour of denouncing more than once for his High
Church and Jacobite speeches. Chiefly, however, is he
remembered for that outburst of turbulent antithesis
against the Naturalization Bill, brought forward by the
King's Ministers in the reign of William III., when Sir
John begged that the " Sergeant should be commanded to
open the door, that they might first kick the Bill out of
the House, and then the foreigners out of the kingdom ! "
His party was so proud of the oration, that they had large
numbers of it printed off and dispersed all over the king
dom. The Whigs, however, to show their horror of such

14 The Church-Goer.
highly spiced elocution, had influence enough to get a
copy of it burnt by the hands of the common hangman.
Sir John was generally in hot water, either as represen
tative of Bristol, or Mayor, or Alderman, or even Church
warden. "In the year 1669," says one local chronicle,
" he informed his Majesty that the Mayor and most of the
Council of Bristol were fanatics. Whereupon Sir Robert
Yeamans was sent for up to London, and was committed
prisoner to the Tower. But it was soon found to the con
trary ; and the informer was forced to fall on his knees
to his Majesty and crave pardon. Sir Robert Yeamans
returned the 21st of February, and was honourably brought
into Bristol with 220 horse ; but the said informer, Sir
John Knight, came to Lawford's Gate, and privately passed
over the water to his own house in Temple Street." He
had the..,worst of it here, certainly ; but we may note the
fact as socially significant, that the Member for Bristol,
two hundred years ago, resided with other local magnates
in Temple Street.
All about soldier priests and their settlement in the
parish is very shadowy now ; and, indeed, chivalry and
feudalism are such far-off things, we need not puzzle our-
selves about them. As a pleasant modern poet sings, —
" The curtle-axe is out of date !
The good old cross-bow bends to Fate ;
'Tis gone the archer's craft !
No tough arm bends the springing yew,
ADd jolly draymen ride in lieu
Of Death upon the shaft.
4: Farewell, then, ancient men of might!
Crusader, errant-squire, and knight !
Our coats and customs soften ;
To rise would only make you weep,
Sleep on, in rusty iron, sleep,
As in a safety coffin I "
Temple Parish, in truth, owes its greatness and prosperity,
or rather the greatness and prosperity it once possessed,
not so much to the spear of Goliath as to the weavers' beam,
represented by its handle. Four or five hundred years ago,
" merry went the shuttle," as the old song has it, within
all its boundaries; and the craft of weaving filled it with

Old Temple Church, Bristol. IB
wealth, so that its cloth-makers had a chapel in the parish
church, and a spacious guild-hall which afterwards be
came the Jews' Synagogue. Edward Blanket, who earned
the gratitude of all ages by that warm bed covering which
still goes by Ins name, was one of the fraternity — a fra
ternity, by the way. equally given to public potations and
public prayers. The patron saint of the cloth-weavers
is, I think, St. Catherine, though I am sure I cannot say
whether her famous wheel was an implement of trade or
of torture. On the eve or vigil of her holy day, which
occurs on the 25th of November, the weavers used to have
a grand jollification in her honour and for their pleasure.
Just before evensong, the Mayor and Corporation came in
procession over Bristol Bridge, lighted hj torch-bearers,
and walked to St. Catherine's Chapel, in Temple Church ;
whence, having heard vespers, they were conducted by
the wardens and brethren of the craft to the spacious and
comfortable hall, where fires were lighted, which blazed
jovially up, casting ruddy reflections on the rafters. Here
the worshipful visitors were entertained " with drinkings,
with spices, cake-bread, and divers sorts of wine, the cups
being sent merrilie round." Then, after the Mayor and
Aldermen had returned to their homes, the " St. Cather
ine's Players," who were doubtless journeymen weavers,
performed in front of the houses of the several swells —
gave them a sort of serenade, in fact — and had for their
pains drink and refreshments sent out to them. Nor did
the celebration end here : the morrow after St. Catherine's
day, the Corporation again assembled in Temple Church,
thence walked in procession about the town, once more
returning to the Church to hear mass and make their
offerings. No doubt the defect in the tower, which was said to be
raised on a foundation of wool sacks (which was only
figuratively true, inasmuch as the weavers contributed
the funds for its erection), has made the structure more
famous than if it had been perfectly upright. Many old
writers, and every old tourist through Bristol, take notice
of its inclination, which is at the top as much as four
feet out of the perpendicular. In a paper on the famous
Stone Kitchen at the other side of the street, an account

16 The Church-Goer.
was given of the queer freak of a modern Duke of Nor
folk, who came down to Bristol specially to take part in
the Saturday tripe and beef-steak dinner, for which the
Kitchen was celebrated. It appears that he was not the
first of his house who had been attracted to Temple for
conviviality or curiosity ; since another Duke, the Howard
of Queen Elizabeth's time, we are told, came over from
Bath and had the bells rung, to see whether the tower
shook much, the tradition being that it rocked under the
vibratory influence of a set of Grandsire triples. I am
sure that I never had the ocular proof of its oscillating in
this fashion, though I have often heard an old story of
an eccentric parishioner, who, when the whole peal was
swinging, would sit beneath the tower with a pocket full
of walnuts, and, inserting one at a time in the crevices
between the corner stones, have them nicely cracked for
him by the swaying to and fro of the structure. This
would probably prove too hard a nut for the reader to
crack; for my own part, I should prefer having my dessert
at home.

THE reader probably remembers the grotesque sugges
tion of Carlyle, that "cast-iron parsons" should be
placed at the corners of all our streets, and so automa
tically constructed, that after being wound up, they would
emit at intervals certain moral sentences for the instruc
tion of the masses. Before the day of consecration we
shall doubtless know whether the future chaplain of the
iron church in Tyndall's Park is to be a metallic minister
of this kind, or a being of flesh and blood. If the latter,
I hope he will be in some manner suitable to the material
and character of the building — a Vulcan of the pulpit, a
Christian Thor, a Tubal Cain of theology, a man with a
strong, sinewy, sledge-hammer style, who will "lay on"
against the vices, follies, and failings of the age like a
blacksmith, or like the stout men of the stalwart English
period, when with ' ' Many a thwack, and many a bang,
Crab-tree on cold iron rang. "
The building itself is the very type, not only of an iron
but an utilitarian age ; it discards ornament altogether,
and if for anything can only be for use. In spite of a
certain hard approach to galvanised iron Gothic, it almost
realizes the ideal of a recent northern reformer and
avowed foe to ritualism, who declared that all that was
wanted for Divine worship was " a large-sized water-tight
tank." It is very ugly ; and yet there is an honesty
about its ugliness. It does not want to seem more than
it is. Gleaming a few nights ago in ghostly paleness
under a watery moon, it looked to me something between
a lazaretto and a cemetery chapel. Indeed it stands where
the lazaretto or plague sheds were erected some couple of
" C

18 The Church-Goer.
hundred years ago, when the pestilence fell sore on the
old city of Bristol, and patients were removed to what is
now one of our fashionable quarters, but was then a remote
and lonely situation.
The iron church in Tyndall's Park, however, is only to
be a temporary structure, and until funds are raised for
the erection of some beautiful architectural form in free
stone and Purbeck marble.* Fifty years ago, they would
not have dreamed of improvising a shed for public worship
in any other material but wood ; but we have entered upon
an iron age, when we not only make everything out of a
ferruginous material, but —
"Iron is each lock, and iron is each door,
Our hands are iron, and our hearts are more. "
Our dukes, even, are "iron." Everything, no doubt, will
be suitable. On the day of consecration, the voluntary
will be Handel's "Harmonious Blacksmith," with hammer
and anvil accompaniment; the text from Proverbs, "Iron
sharpeneth iron " ; the alms-dish will be carried round by
by some local " Gotz, with the iron hand," if not Goethe's
original ; and the bell be rung by "The Man in the Iron
Mask." No bell, however, need be used to summon the
congregation ; all the sexton has to do is to beat the side of
the building, and it will be heard booming like a monster
gong from Brandon Hill to White Ladies' Road ; and, to
use Longfellow's lines, —
"You can hear him swing bis heavy sledge,
With measured beat and slow,
Like a sexton ringing the village bell,
When the evening sun is low ! "
Every nation has some staple material characteristic of
its clime and people. The Japanese make almost every
thing of paper — houses, furniture, cordage, shoes, and
occasionally clothes. We make everything of iron— ships,
^shirt-collars, pens, churches, and chapels. Well, there is
¦a promise of something strong and practical in such a
-•structure : you can hardly imagine religious langour and
paralysis in places of worship made of aniron material.
* . The funds have been since raised, and the stone structure also.

An Iron Church. 19
Some one has called our age " an age at onee destitute of
faith and terrified at scepticism," and there is at least
some truth in the description. To preach to people with
effect, we ought to be able to wrap them round with some
thing like an iron shroud — shut them up in something
that will freeze them in winter and fry them in summer,
and cure them of their enervating love of ease, their
effeminate self-indulgence : make them feel that they are
mortal, and drive the iron into their souls. And I hope
the bishop has found a man that will do this — to send it
deep into his hearers, and spare not.
It is a curious locality, too, for a kind of structure that
one might only expect to see in the "black country".; in
the hills above Merthyr, or the region round about Dowlais,
filled with miners, furnace-men, and plate-layers. In the
midst of luxurious dwellings, spreading elms, and glitter
ing greenhouses, stands the iron church in stern severity,
and as if in protest and rebuke of the delicacy and softness
of surrounding objects, the aspiring towers of ambitious
Highbury included. Here, in fact, we have the old order
of things inverted : Puritanism tricked out with architec
tural toys and ornament ; while stately Episcopalianism
sits enshrined in a hard, grim, galvanised iron tenement,
that Baxter and Bunyan, and all the Independents of
the Cromwellian era would have considered a building
raised in the very beauty of holiness.

% Cnmirlt-bxrfan #Itr Cfrtrnrij.
WE often talk a great deal without thinking what we
are talking about ; and when we talk about the
pious care of past ages for the sacred structures of the
land, we do not always take the trouble of thinking, or at
least inquiring from the records of the past, whether we
have good grounds or not for all we say. Our ancestors
sometimes let their churches tumble about their ears in a
fashion that we would not tolerate. In old Catholic days
it occasionally occurred that the bishops themselves had to
interfere to make not merely laymen but clerical patrons
do their duty towards the fabrics committed to them.
Amongst some old papers which recently fell into my
possession, I find a manuscript copy of the sequestration
by the Bishop of Worcester, of the proceeds of All Saints'
living, in the year 1493, in order that the money should be
applied to the reparation of the chancel of the church,
which, " through the default of those venerable men, the
Abbot and Convent of the Monastery of St. Augustine in
the town of Bristol," had fallen into such ruin that people
could not approach or walk by the building for fear of its
tumbling upon them. I do not know if the document has
ever before been printed in full, unless it has been so re
cently ; for the copyist, the late William Tyson, would
hardly have gone to the trouble of writing it out, which
he apparently has done from some old parish or abbatical
book, if it were already in type. Here it is, word for
word : —
Robert, by Divine permission, Bishop of Worcester, to our beloved
in Christ, Master John Hawley, rector of the parish church of the
blessed Mary of the Port, in the town of Bristol ; also to Thomas
Snygg and John Baten, of the aforesaid town, in our diocese of Wor
cester, health, grace, and welfare. 20

A Tumble-Down Old Church. 21
Whereas, in our ordinary visitation, lately by us performed, it has
been found and discovered by the parishioners of All Saints', in the
town of Bristol, that the ohancel of the said Parish church so much
and in such manner has fallen into decay through default of those
venerable men the Abbat and convent of the Monastery of St. Augus
tine, in the said town of Bristol, that all and others meeting as well
within as without the said church, by reason of their fear of such
ruined state, could not approach nor walk as they should, we, least
such dangers should arise to those parishioners and others from want
of repairs of the said chancel, sequester and decree to hold in certain
and safe custody, all and sundry fruits, tythes, oblations, obventions,
pensions, portions, and emoluments whatsoever to the said Abbat
and convent belonging and relating to the said church. We, there
fore, thus sequester and decree, and have thus committed, and do
commit, to you the custody of our sequestration. We, therefore,
commit, and by a firm injunction command, regarding our seques
tration in such manner in the said fruits, tythes, oblations, obven-
tions, pentions, portions, and other emoluments whatsoever belong
ing and relating to the said Abbat and convent, by the interposition
of our authority, that you shall keep them, and cause them to be
kept, in custody until in such manner the defect of the said chancel
by you through our authority shall cause to be repaired, provided
always that you shall give of those things which you shall receive a
full and faithful account to us, or to our commissaries. Given under
seal, at our ordinary Visitation, at the house of the Gaunts, the 16th
day of July, in year of Our Lord, 1493, and of our consecration the
seventh. I need not remind the local reader that Bristol did not
become a bishopric, nor did Gloucester either, until after
the Reformation and the suppression of the monasteries,
when the two old abbeys became cathedral churches. The
Bishop of Worcester had up to that time the episcopal
supervision of Bristol, and was the visitor or ecclesiastical
inspector of the many monastic establishments with which
the town was then dotted.
It will be seen that on the occasion when he put his seal
to this deed of sequestration, he was holding his ordinary
visitation at the house of the Gaunts, now the Mayor's
Chapel. Doubtless a deputation of the parishioners of All
Saints, and probably of some of the principal burgesses,
waited upon his Lordship, and made a sharp complaint of
the neglect of the old gentlemen, the Black Canons on
the other side of the Green, but probably not until the old
gentlemen themselves had been in vain and frequently
applied to, to do something for the tumble-down Church

22 The Church-Goer.
of the Kalendaries, which was in their patronage. I am
afraid the Black Canons were about this time more intent
upon looking after their own comforts — the state of the
monastic cellar, the supply of the abbot's fishponds out at
Leigh, and the yield of the abbot's orchards in the same
pleasant farm retreat of the brotherhood — than upon their
own spiritual efficiency and the structural stability of the
churches within their gift. The Bishop of Worcester had
often to pull them up, and perhaps the abbot thought
himself as good a man as the bishop, and refused to at
tend to his admonitions, until the latter had recourse to
the sharp remedy of the law, as in this case of All Saints.
All Saints is now in the patronage of the Dean and
Chapter, as the successors of the abbots and the monks,
but we hear of no complaint of the threatened ruin ; in
deed, the sacred edifice is in excellent repair.
One is curious to see what was the state of local feeling
— what the social condition of the town and the public
proceedings taking place in it — at the time the seques
tration was made. Was the old burgh itself and its
affairs, commercial and municipal, in a tumble-down
state, like the chancel of All Saints ? This does not ap
pear to have been the case. It was the ninth year of the
reign of Henry VII., when I find in the Chronicles of
Bristol for the same year and the two previous and two
subsequent years, entries to this effect : — " 1491. Maud
Easterfield gave a ring to the image of our Lady in the
north porch of St. Mary Redcliff." " 1493. Spencer's
Almshouse, in Lewin's Mead, founded " : the very time
when the chancel of All Saints was in imminent danger
of toppling on the townsfolk's heads. " 1495. William
Regent, Mayor, with two thousand townsmen, clad in
black, met the dead body of the Duke of Bedford, and
accompanied it to Keynsham, where it was interred." In
the same year the High Cross was gilded and painted ;
so that the town does not appear to have been in a torpid
state, or wanting in public spirit. Only the old monks at
the Abbey in the Green seemed to have fallen asleep, and
become, as we should say in our days, jolly indifferent to
their duties — jolly indifferent is just the word. There
are a couple of other entries in our annals at this time,

A Tumble-Down Old Church. 23
which perhaps may be some clue to the neglect of " those
venerable men, the Abbot and Monastery of St. Augus
tine," as the Bishop of Worcester, with something like
quiet satire, designates them in the deed of sequestration.
In the year 1492, that immediately preceding the date of
the document above given, beer, we are told in the chron
icle, was introduced into England. Were the monks so
charmed and delighted with the new beverage, so intent
upon brewing it and putting it away in barrels, that they
had not time to look after the state of the churches in
their patronage ? I cannot say. If it was so, they were
probably not the first folks with whose business the free
use of old October interfered. And again, in 1495, I find
that Henry VII. and his Queen visited Bristol, and lodged
in St. Augustine's Monastery. It is true that monas
teries were then for kings and great folk in lieu of inns ;
and warm quarters they were too. Nevertheless, the fact
shows that the venerable men must have had heavy
charges upon the conventual purse from time to time,
under the head of "hospitality"; and being probably
short of cash, let the chancels of their churches tumble
into ruin.
Another entry in this same 1495 is significant. " The
sanctuary of St. Mary of St. Augustine's Green was
broken." This St. Mary's was, I believe, the Elder Lady
Chapel of the present Cathedral — that on the north side
of the choir, and I dare say was, like numerous other
sanctuaries of that date, a place where malefactors could
take refuge from the law and their creditors without fear
of pursuit ; thus becoming a nuisance ; so that Henry ob
tained from his Holiness, Pope Alexander, authority that
they should not shelter traitors. The Lady Chapel was
np to this time a sanctuary for the town generally, and
the handicraftsmen, who from a remote antiquity occu
pied the Green as a rope-walk, were a turbulent lot, and
doubtless would have treated very roughly any attempt to
invade the privileges of the old monastery, under the
shadow of which they spun their yarns.
It was probably, however, greatly to the convenience
and satisfaction of the respectable townsfolk that the
sagacious Henry broke the sanctuary with the consent of

24 The Church-Goer.
the Pope ; for it must have been very annoying when a
scamp got into an honest burgher's books, to see him be
take himself to a boat, cross over to St. Augustine's Back,
and take shelter in the Lady Chapel, having reached
which, he could put his finger to his nose and defy his
wine merchant, boot-maker, or tailor to touch him. It is
true that, did this old Catholic privilege now exist, it
would be particularly convenient at a season when Christ
mas threatens to bury poor Paterfamilias under an ava
lanche of — " these earthly ills,
The inflammation of his yearly bills."
The Cathedral would in this case, and at this time of the
year, be the most popular place of worship in Bristol, and
the subsacrist make quite a harvest of it, handing rush-
bottomed chairs to unfortunate fathers of families who
had no other refuge but the Elder Lady Chapel from
those terrible visitations — tradesmen's Christmas ac
counts.

Joscpl) tftlolff at St. Mlcrburgl/s.
OF all the old sacred edifices in Bristol I know none
that seems so peculiarly and entirely a city church as
Saint Werburgh. Even more than All Saints, it stands
out in the very thoroughfare. The flag-way of the most
frequented street runs the full length of its south side,
while its east end is traversed by another:* its bells,
when ringing, send a shower of sounds down on the heads
of the passing crowds below ; and so close to the world
of traffic, of men and merchandise, does it stand that, so
long as this world is awake outside, its hum may be
heard within. Through the long winter nights the
columned interior is never entirely dark, for the reflection
from the street lamps, entering through the windows,
chequers the old church with light and shade ; now
brightening up its pews and pavement, and anon leaving
nooks of darkness behind pillar and projection. On a
winter Sunday evening, when muffled families are troop
ing to their various churches, I occasionally like to slip
into old St. Werburgh's ; not through the south entrance,
which leads from the crowded pavement of Corn Street,
but through the churchyard on the north side, entering
from Small Street. It is quite another place approached
by this little-frequented passage. The small burial-
ground packed with the remains of many centuries of
parishioners, and of the existence of which it is a mere
accident that makes many acquainted, has in itself some
thing suggestive of bygone times ; and then there is the
old spacious north porch, with its groined roof of fan
tracery, its open sides and spacious seats, — all this, with
its character of seclusion, is new to the visitor, who may
* Nunc hiatus valde deflevdus. The place knows the Church no more.
25

26 The Church-Goer.
enter often enough through the south door, without ever
dreaming that there is also on the other side a mode of
access. Always standing within the city walls, however
restricted the mural bounds may have been, St. Wer-
burgh's was a place of worship for the buighers when
Bristol consisted of little more than four streets, each
terminating with and leading to a gate in this same city
wall. So no wonder we read that at one time, in this
church were a number of chantries, with a multitude
of little silver lamps lighting before their altars, each the
gift of a substantial parishioner, who left a trifle to be
annually paid by a rent-charge out of the houses round
about to furnish oil and wick, so that its light should be
kept up and his soul have the benefit of its dim flicker-
ings. Well, the silver lamps have been a long time gone
out ; but let us hope the souls of the donors in the other
world experienced neither injury nor inconvenience from
their extinction.
It was in this church or churchyard that William
Boucher, who, with Yeomans, suffered death in the time
of the Commonwealth, for what was called " conspiring "
to deliver up the city to Prince Rupert, was buried.
But this is not the only thing suggestive of romance
about St. Werburgh's. Barrett gives you a list of its
rectors : they begin as far back as 1245, when Roger de
Sowey, a contribution from the Abbey of Keynsham,
filled its pulpit. Pass the finger down, and next but one
to him you find " William le Roper, removed because mar
ried." Now, often and often have I paused, full of
curiosity, over this entry, prying and peering with both
my eyes into it, as though I would extort from the silent
page some further information about the expelled Bene
dict. The reader has possibly been at Worcester Cathe
dral ; if so, his attention has been doubtless attracted to a
tombstone, forming part of the pavement of the cloister,
just as you enter into the nave by a little south door. On
this tomb is inscribed — its only inscription — uMiserrimus"
(the most miserable of men). No date, no other record,
gives you a clue to the wretched being whose ashes lie
below ; and to your burning curiosity, to every conjecture,
the cold stone only returns the one reply, "M-iserrimus,"

Joseph Wolff at St. Werburgh's. 27
until you feel almost disposed to dig it up, to see if the
contents beneath could afford any solution. So it is with
this entry in the roll of the past rectors of St. Werburgh.
You burn to know more of this William le Roper, who, in
1290, was turned out of the pulpit of this old church for
the offence of marrying the one be loved, or at least ought
to have loved. You ask yourself, Was he a popular
preacher of that day, run after by all the burghers'
daughters of old Corn Street, and at length overcome by
the depth and lustre of some pair of blue eyes that ever
looked devoutly and lovingly up at him from some par
ticular spot in the aisle below ? Then, of course, follow
the secret marriage, and, by-and-by, the discovery ; next
a commission, with the Abbot of Keynsham at its head,
to try the delinquent, and finally, his removal, while all
the central city was alive with the romantic story, and
the burghers stood at their doors in the evening and
talked it over, and (as their natures happened to be) con
demned or pitied the young priest, who loved not wisely
but too well.
I am convinced nevertheless, this William le Roper,
whoever he might be, was not a more remarkable man
than on a certain Sunday occupied the pulpit of the same
St. Werburgh's. It was quite an accident that led me into
the church at the evening service. The night was wintry
and inclement, and there were comparatively few there.
As I entered, accents of half-broken English saluted my
ear from the reading-desk, where stood Joseph Wolff, the
great Eastern traveller, or that "sublime vagabond," as
somebody called him, now mumbling, now shouting his
way through the first lesson. The great folio Bible and
Prayer-book belonging to the church lay closed on the
reading-desk beside him, as, stooping over a little manual
of his own, he read the chapter. I am aware that the
Church-goer has already daguerreotyped this remarkable
man, and I do not propose to attempt another personal
description : I simply mean to give some notion of a sermon
which had many points of novelty in it.
Joseph Wolff, though he were a thousand times a
Doctor of Divinity, is still a thorough Jew — nationally, I
mean, not theologically. He has a Jew's feelings, a Jew's

28 The Church-Goer.
aspirations, and a Jew's patriotism. Though only a hand
ful came out through the driving sleet of the night to
hear him, he could not resist the opportunity of vaunting
his own nation and rebuking their Gentile presumption.
The wild olive branch spoken of in Rom. xi. 17-21 was
cited at once as his text and, I suppose, the type of his
hearers : " And if some of the branches be broken off, and
thou, being a wild olive tree, wert grafted in among them,
and with them partakest of the root and fatness of the olive
tree ; boast not against the branches. But if thou boast,
thou bearest not the root, but the root thee " ; and so he
went on reading, down to the end of the 28th verse, and
from every verse deriving faith in the fulfilment of his
cherished hope. For the old man at once began by lean
ing over the pulpit, and in a colloquial frankness, telling
them that he was one who believed in the second coming
of Christ to rule personally in the Holy City, when the
natural branches were to be again grafted in to take root
in Mount Zion, and overshadow the earth. His vivid
imagination revelled in the prospect which his faith con
jured up, and as the vision of Jerusalem — once again in
glory, its ancient people recalled back within its walls,
filling its streets, thronging in and out through its gates
— arose to his mental eye, he became perfectly excited,
tossed his arms aloft, waved the little black Bible in his
hand, and as he cried out in transport, seemed momentarily
in danger of giving vent to his feelings in a burst of song,
such as broke from the lips of Balaam, when he beheld
the beau{y of " thy tents, O Israel " ; or such as David
gave utterance to in the 48th Psalm, when some fine
morning, with his harp in his hand, he looked out on the
palaces of Mount Zion, with their polished columns and
golden friezes glittering in the rising sun, and as he swept
the cords of his celestial instrument, his voice gushed
forth in a glorious melody of praise to God and patriotic
exultation : " Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised
in the city of our God, in the mountain of His holiness.
Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is
Mount Zion, on the sides of the north, the city of the
great King ! " I'll be bound Joseph Wolff's imagination
and local memory had then evoked a panorama to his eyes,

Joseph Wolff at St. Werburgh's. 29
which, vivid as his language is, he could not describe,
and which it would require a pencil dipped in the golden
tints of an Eastern sunset to depict. The gilded " gates
of the daughter of Zion" glistened once more in his fancy :
the marble colonnades of the city of David again shone
forth; the gorgeous palaces of Solomon and the Mac-
cabean princes once more upreared their domes; while,
from the " Beautiful " porches of Solomon's Temple, and
the magnificent summit of Mount Moriah, the enthusiastic
Joseph in his doctor's hood looked over on the Mount of
Olives, on the Tombs of the Prophets, and on the little
village of Bethany bosomed amidst its palms ; as by the
sides of the pools of Bethesda and Gihon, and in the
solemn shadow of the Valley of Jehoshaphat with its
ancient sepulchres, sauntered forth in the cool of the
evening crowds of the returned children of Judah, no
longer abiding in unbelief, but recalled from the marts of
Europe and the bazaars of India, back to the city of God.
It was with no affected ecstasy that Joseph exclaimed, as
he thought over a picture which he could not describe, " Oh,
indeed, it is a glorious panorama!" For hours together
he could have taken us Gentiles in imagination around
the walls of Jerusalem, and as we walked about Zion with
him, and went round about her, he would have bade us,
in language only less richly picturesque than King
David's, ¦' to tell the towers thereof, to mark well her
bulwarks, and to consider her palaces." No ; the wild
olive tree must not boast itself; the natural branches were
again to be grafted in, — and the Jew Joseph read in his
own peculiar way the 136th Psalm, as a proof of all that
God had done for His chosen people when He wrought
judgments disastrous and terrible on others, in order to
work out their deliverance-1 — when He smote Egypt with
their first-born ; when He divided the Red Sea in two
parts, slew mighty kings, Sehon, king of the Amorites,
and Og, king of Bashan, and gave their land for an
heritage, " for His mercy endureth for ever." And ever
and anon, like a refrain at the end of each verse, fell from
Joseph's lips with a strange modulation, the words, " for
his mercy endureth for ever," untd they struck upon your
nervous system and upon your ear, always acutely ex-

30 The Church-Goer.
pectant of the coming sentence, with a strange effect.
The same providence and mercy which brought them
forth from the land of Egypt were again to bring them
into the city of Jerusalem. Scattered amongst nations,
but not mixing with them, they were, like oil upon water,
kept separate for their great destiny. He (Joseph Wolff)
was no boaster; but he had travelled — he had seen his
brother Jews from Bristol to Gibraltar, from Gibraltar to
Malta, from Malta to Egypt, from Egypt to the Euphrates,
from the Euphrates to the Ganges, from the Ganges to
America, and everywhere, though buying and selling,
living and moving amongst, they were ever a people dis
tinct from, the natives ; persecuted often, but powerful
ever by their talents. Indeed, Disraeli the younger him
self was never given to boast more of the Hebrew genius
and capacity than Joseph Wolff. "I have seen a caravan
of 5,000," said Joseph, " composed of every race, from the
wild Bedouin to the imperious Turkoman, and all these
have stopped on a Saturday to let the solitary Jew, the
sole one of that great multitude, rest and worship. It is
true they might insult him and jibe at him, but still they
stopped the day in the desert — the 5,000 stopped for one
Jew — such was the mysterious influence he exercised.
And so it had been from all times, when the most power
ful monarchs chose their Prime Ministers from the
Hebrew race. Joseph, the Jew, was the chief state ad
viser of the great Pharaoh ; Daniel, of Nebuchadnezzar ;
Mordecai, of Abasuerus ; and within five hundred years the
mighty Tamerlane's first minister was a Jew : Genghis
Khan's was the same. A great controversialist had been
the Chancellor of Spain, and " — I expected here he was
going to complete the catalogue with the brilliant name
of Benjamin Disraeli, in connection with the Exchequer of
Queen Victoria, but he turned aside to the Tartars, and
added — "no Turkoman chief took an important step with
out the counsel of some Nomadic Hebrew. " He did not con
tinue, like the author of " Conmgsby," to claim for the out
cast race the credit of supplying in a Braham and a Grisi
our operas with the first singers in Europe; in their Roth
schilds, with the first financiers; but the first stands made in
the infidel universities of Germany against rationalism, he

Joseph Wolff at St. WerburgW*. 31
declared, were by profoundly learned and converted Jews
— -converted by the operations of no society, but by their
own convictions. Amongst his praises of the chosen people,
the preacher asserted (and I understand with good reason)
that in one duty the Jews were superior to most nominal
Christians, namely — in the treatment of females. "I have
seen them in all countries and under all circumstances,
but I have never known a Jew maltreat his wife." And
I must confess, before I heard this statement of Joseph
Wolff, I was often struck with the contrast which in this
respect the children of Israel must have presented to
other people in the East. Their domestic and national
love and reverence of women may indeed be inferred even
from their sacred poetry, where their most beautiful
similes and images are drawn from the sex ; and under the
type of the "Daughter of Zion," the glory and ornament
of the sanctuary are celebrated. Universal piety, he
said, was the true peace society, and, until that had ar
rived, all the efforts of your modern peace societies were
but nonsense, " not worth that," and Joseph contemptu
ously snapped his finders in the pulpit, where he had been
talking, reading, or rhapsodying away for more than an
hour, unconscious that several persons had already de
serted from his "Jerusalem Delivered" to a domestic cup
of tea.

% Cfrarcjj xrff % gohms.
IF I wanted to give an old gentleman's ghost a surprise,
I should like to pop that of Mr. I. Cooke down in the
midst of his old demesne, and ask him to look round
on his new neighbours. Who Mr. I. Cooke was, every
body in Bristol knows ; that is, everybody knows as much
as anybody is ever likely to know ; the sum total of his
personal history being contained in a short inscription
over the entrance to that once lone tower where, until a
few years ago, bottled porter and sandwiches, with a little
Cognac on the sly, could be obtained by holiday keepers,
" I. Cooke, 1693." It was just enough to make you eager
to know more of the individual who, towards the close of
the united reign of William and Mary, built the tall and
narrow turret, solitary as a beacon on the bold high bank
of the river, where the Avon makes one of its most
picturesque bends.* It was by no means a marvel of
architecture ; as a local poet once described it, —
" 'Twas not like a warehouse — 'twas not like a stable,
It hadn't a door, and it hadn't a gable,
And it put men in mind of the building of Babel."
Nevertheless, it harmonized with the wooded landscape,
and was a pleasant object from the river beneath. Why
tradition should have stigmatised the building as a " Folly"
I cannot see. People now-a-days erect edifices five times
as large, without having their wisdom called in question.
Any of those great freestone mansions, with which Mr.
Baker studded the adjacent slopes, is as big as half a
dozen of Mr. Cooke's constructions ; yet who dare hint a
* The tower has been several years incorporated in a modern villa
residence, which goes by the old name of " Cook's Folly."

A Church off the Downs. 33
word against the sanity of those long-headed, strong-
headed citizens, who come out here and spend in ormolu
furniture and melon pits, some of the gold that they win
in the keen game of trade, played under the dun smoke
canopy of the subjacent city. And then, could Mr. Cooke
have selected a more eligible site for a lodge than on that
commanding promontory, from which, seated at the open
lattice of its upper apartment, he might, as he sat and
smoked his pipe of peace, see the sun sink slowly down
behind the Glamorganshire hills, reddening with its disc
ere it disappeared a great broad pathway of sapphire
across the Bristol Channel. Folly ! indeed. Mr. Cooke
was a man of taste, and if, as is surmised, he was the
owner of Sneyd Park and the broad lands surrounding,
the structure in question, as a matter of expense, must
have been a mere bagatelle to him. The turret is now
absorbed in one of the new chateaux which are rapidly
effacing at this point the sylvan solitude of the scenery,
promising before long to furnish our old river banks with
new Rhenish fortresses, where Bristol traders, lodged in
baronial halls, shall watch from frowning battlements the
passage of ships which charter parties and bills of lad
ing invest with more than a picturesque interest for the
castellan above.
Indeed, if you desire to see how our modern Bristolians
are resolved " in health and wealth long to live," you
should visit the new suburban colony of Sneyd Park, and
note in what space your man of business loves to lodge,
and with what comforts to surround himself. Wealth is
your true revolutionizer. It changes the face of a locality
more quickly than anything else. Until recently this
was a solitude, but speculation cast its eye on the spot,
and it was peopled. Even the younger reader can re
member the wooden bars across Pitch-and-Pay Lane — the
last trace of the tradition of old plague times, when the
Gloucestershire peasant carried his provisions to the
citizens, and would not touch the coin thrown back again
in payment untd it had kept quarantine on the ground for
a couple of hours ; yet the day may come when an open
market for Sneyd Town may be held on the same spot.
Shut out by joiners and stone masons from my usual
D

34 The Church-Goer.
place of worship, I found myself easily furnished with an
excuse for a bright bracing walk across the Downs, and
a visit to the newly-raised Church of St. Mary Magdalene,
which has been built as a necessary addition to the
affluent residential settlement of Sneyd. This is an
arrangement upon which English decorum, if not devotion,
always insists ; and as the interest of the building-land
speculator accords therewith, he rarely fails whatever his
own creed may be, to liberally second an object which
adds to the value of his disposable lots.
But to whatever we owe the pleasing little ecclesiastical
structure that reposes amongst the soft green undulating
grounds of the old demesne so quickly being sliced up
into new tenements, it seems not to have come before
there was a congregation for it. Of course, St. Mary
Magdalene is not a " poor man's church." You cannot
expect it to be so. Poor men or poor women do not come
out of those mansions and villas that look down upon it,
and almost seem to dominate it : poor people do not alight
from those carriages I see winding down the serpentine
road that leads with a bold sweep to the unfinished porch,
in answer to the somewhat harsh summons of the one
tinkling bell, which some future benefactor will convert
into a musical peal, that will fill the green valleys with
rich harmonies, to be heard by the returning sailor in the
river below, reminding him, perhaps for the first time
since his ship has been home-bound from a distant port, of
that, the like of which, I believe, there is nowhere else to
be met with on earth — an English Sabbath. Here, around,
about, and in this little purple-tiled, high-pitch roofed
church are the evidences of other national characteristics,
English wealth and comfort, which show themselves in
the aspect and advent of a congregation, as much as in
anything else. There is for the most part a respectable
exterior of religion about folk well off in the world — a
complaisant gratitude for the good things of this life, such
as actuated old Pepys when he started his carriage.
" Abroad to-day with my wife the first time that ever I
rode in my coach (he writes) ; which do make my heart
rejoice and praise God, and pray Him to bless it to me
and continue it."

A Church off the Downs. 35
Around St. Mary Magdalene not a few of our wealthiest
nonconformist citizens have set up their abode ; but
whether there is any danger of their primitive faith being
shaken by the proximity of the quiet little Gothic church
with the purple roof, unless a dissenting chapel prickly
with minarets be set up alongside it, I cannot say.
If, however, the congregation of St. Mary Magdalene
should increase, a second aisle must be built or some ex
cluded.* As it is, the few seats afforded to the small
labouring rustic population of the hamlet are engrossed
by wanderers from the neighbouring city, who like the
walk across the Down on Sunday morning, service in a
picturesque neighbourhood, and good, carefully-prepared
sermons. There are "wind bags" sometimes in the
pulpit as well as on the platform, and those who love
sonorous discourses would probably see " nothing " in the
quiet, unshowy, but thoughtful and helping discourse of
the incumbent of St. Mary Magdalene. The numbers,
however, that make their way to the new church from a
distance to hear him, prove that those who can distinguish
between sound and substance are not a few.
* The second aisle has since been built, and further extension
made. A nonconformist place of worship, with a tall thin spire, has
also been erected in the hamlet.

"~j\/TY dear," said I, on the Sunday after a certain con-
JjJ. tested election, " I'll not go to church either in Bris
tol or Clifton to-day. There's no use ; I can't say my
prayers in comfort within sight or sound of anything that
can remind me of the events of the week. If I go to our
own church, my neighbour Smith opposite wUl be making
telegraphic signals to me all the time of service, raising
his eye-brows and lifting his hand, as much as to say,
' Weren't we awfully licked ! ' while Brown will be moving
his lips in a manner that leaves you no doubt he is mutter
ing, ' What a mess we made of it.5 Then there's that
apostate fellow, Robinson, who foreswore his faith, and
voted Peto and Berkeley : what's the use of trying to be
devout while he looks so exultant over every honest
Churchman at St.  's, and glances triumphantly to
wards that infamous greengrocer in the north aisle, who
promised me for Fremantle, and yet openly voted against
us. No, my dear ; I'll go out of Bristol to-day for my
prayers. I'll put a couple of miles between me and the
souvenirs of that shocking beating we got on Wednesday.
I'll not be reminded in the midst of the Litany of last
week's work by Jones, who was my f ellow-committeeman,
and sits two pews off, or Jenkinson, who canvassed the
parish with me, and has his seat in the south transept.
No ; I'll go out of town."
" And where will you go, my dear," she inquired, "with
out meeting something to remind you of your mortifica
tion? At Westbury or Henbury you'll encounter old
associations, and at Redland you'll be in the thick of the
Radicals." " No evil spirits,'7 I answered, " according to an old
Scottish superstition, can cross a running river, so I'll go

Leigh Church. 37
over the Suspension_i?ridge, and say my prayers at
Abbots' Leigh, and try to compose myself in a scene that
never failed to tranquillise me."
And wasn't it pleasant to get out again amongst the
great waving ferns of Leigh Woods, whose graceful green
fronds recalled to mind no party colour ! Beggars' Bush
is down and the abbots are dead ; but the old road is
still quiet and quieting, in spite of that airy structure
which, swinging by two giant watch-chains (such as
Goram and Vincent might have worn) over the great
chasm, bridges it. Before I got to the Ionic gateway of
Leigh Court, I was once more myself, soothed down by the
sylvan greenery and the singing birds, that made bright
and vocal my way without party tunes.
Talking of singing, they were at the Jubilate when I
got within ear-shot of Leigh church porch. And what a
change in the musical department of public worship there
is since last I attended service in that pretty little parish
church ! What a change, in fact, in most parish churches
in this particular. Forty or fifty years ago, the favourite
Sunday walk of the old Bristol citizen used to be Ashton,
when that ancient village fane was often half-filled with
truants from the great neighbouring town. Then the clerk
would come forward to the front of the gallery, and make
proclamation, not exactly like Nebuchadnezzar's herald,
that when they heard the sound of the cornet, flute, harp,
sackbut, and dulcimer, they should fall down and worship,
but that when they heard the sound of the pitch-pipe,
all competent to do so should come forward and aid the
parochial choir in their vocal performance.
They want no foreign help, however, at Abbots' Leigh.
When last (many years ago) I was in the church, the
parish orchestra, consisting of bassoon, violoncello, and
flute, was in the west gallery ; now the choir congregate
around a new organ, placed at the east end of the south
aisle, and played by a young lady of the parish. Sackbut,
psaltery, bassoon, and big fiddle had disappeared, and in
stead, the parish children, with pieces of music in their
hands, sang lustily forth, and fairly, an elaborate Te Deum.
Marvellous change ! and we owe it all to time and certifi
cated schoolmasters, and Mainzer and Hullah.

38 The Church-Goer.
I wish, however, the architect who rebuilt the nave
some fourteen or fifteen years ago had given us a little
more light. Like Jacob, I am growing " old and dim-
sighted," and, even with the aid of spectacles, I could not
see to read the Psalms. There was no use crying out
with Goethe, " Light, more light," for no more could be
had, and I was compelled to take the parson's words for
the Epistle and Gospel ; while, for the same reason, the
choir lost a vocal contributor towards their parish har
mony, which I flatter myself would not have been wholly
unappreciated. Nevertheless, I was able to see good Sir William Miles
— the Sir Roger de Coverley of Leigh — in his pew in the
chancel. I am not one of Carlyle's hero-worshippers, and
Sir William is not a hero, but a plain, sensible, kindly-
hearted country gentleman, and that is a better and far
more serviceable character than any of your heroes. But
it was as good as a sermon — better almost than the one I
heard that day — to look at that fine, firmly-built, genial
man (whom time has begun to mellow), as he stood under
Sir George Norton's monument, at once the prince and
patriarch of the parish, and, like Lee's Cathedral, " look
ing tranquillity," now that he has cast off the cares of
parliamentary life.
I said I fled from Bristol to forget the elections of the
last week, but the sight of the Troy baronet brought
back to my mind old hustings scenes, and several years
ago, when I saw him belted and spurred a Knight of the
Shire, by the High-Sheriff of Somerset, in the Market
place of Wells. As he got on his grey charger, and the
sword was buckled round his waist, and he started on his
ride round the little city, followed by Colonel Pinney
similarly accoutred, he was younger and straighter than
now ; but let us hope, with Fontenelle and old Cornaro,
the happiest time of life lies on the shady side of sixty,
and that Sir William has learned that knowledge which,
according to Rochefoucauld, is so rare, namely, " how to
grow old."
On the northern slope of that beautiful churchyard of
Leigh we may read on the pure white marble some touch
ing reasons why the good baronet, ere he has attained his

Leigh Church. 39
.threescore years and ten, prefers the quiet loveliness of
Leigh, looking down on the broad channel and blue hills
beyond, to the blaze and battle of prolonged parliamen
tary life.
As some evenings before I sat on the steps of the old
cross — the stump of which is now covered with purple
convolvulus and nasturtiums, and while
" The balm of the air
Stole to my heart, and made all summer there," —
I missed my three children, whom I had taken with me
for an evening's walk. On going round to the other side
of the church, I found them spelling out on the white
marble monuments those tender passages which tell of
the blessedness of those who die young ; and that night,
when darkness had settled down on churchyard and chan
nel, on pillared Court and peasant's cottages, the little
ones were overheard repeating with hushed voices in their
beds what they had read on the white plinth of Parian
cross and polished headstone.
Abbots' Leigh has not passed through as many owners
as some other estates in the neighbourhood of Bristol.
Held before the Reformation by the Abbots of St. Augus
tine, it was a pleasant summer retreat for the head of the
Black Canons when the brethren became troublesome, and
it was convenient to leave the unruly " religious " to the
care of the less aged Prior. A park full of deer and a
pond full of fish, herbs in the garden and good wine in
the cellar, must have made a residence less romantically
situated quite tolerable ; but creature comforts in a pastoral
Paradise like Leigh often detained the Superior of St.
Augustine's at his country house, until the Bishop of Wor
cester, who was the visitor, had to go out and warn him
back to business. From the monks it descended to Paul
Bush, the first prelate of Bristol after the Reformation,
when he turned the manor into money, the Nortons be
coming the purchasers. From the Nortons, who were
Tories, it descended to the Trenchards, who were not ;
one of them having been the author of the " Independent
Whig," in which he was assisted by Gordon, the translator
of Tacitus, who afterwards wedded his friend's widow.

40 The Church-Goer.
From the Trenchards, I think it was purchased by Mr.
P. J. Miles, and it is not a little curious that Lady
Miles, the wife of Sir William, is of the same family as
Trenchard's literary colleague, the translator of Tacitus ;
so oddly do associations recur in the transfer of things
terrestrial. In the nave of the old church — if I remember
rightly — was a characteristic monument to Trenchard ;
but several years ago, as the villagers were composing
themselves by their firesides one Sunday evening, a flame
shot up through the roof of the old church, and aid came
rushing from Court and cottage to suppress the fire ; but
what the newspaper reporters call the " devouring element "
had consumed the nave, and with it the memorial of the
author of the " Independent Whig " (a creature, to my
mind, as fabulous as a flying dragon), before the efforts
of .those who came to the rescue could be of any avail.
The chancel, however, with the tombs of the Tory Nor
tons, was fortunately preserved.

^rr^beacon ^Unison at Home.
ALTHOUGH the nest of that ecclesiastical stormy
petrel, the Ven. George Anthony Denison, I think
East Brent is the most pastoral and peaceful-looking
village I ever visited. If he were content to see his
peaches ripen on the parsonage garden wall, and watch
the apples redden in the parsonage orchard, he might
imagine himself in a parochial paradise; but the " old man
Adam" is there, under the shady elms and the shadow of
an archdeacon's hat, as strong as in the first Eden. Re
mote from cities, indeed, is that gabled |vicarage beneath
the shelter of Brent Knoll, yet no fighting can go on in
Oxford or Convocation, on platform or in press, that its
venerable tenant does not smell the battle afar off, and
leaving his apricots, his nectarines, and his pretty flower
beds to take care of themselves, he buckles on his armour
and flies away to mingle in the fray. At the very least,
he sits down by his sweet study window, looking out on
the rich green dairy farms, and there blows the "blast of
war" through an impetuous pamphlet, which further in
flames the polemic hurly-burly. It is hard to associate
the title of venerable with so fiery a spirit, the term is so
suggestive of serene calm and grey quietude ; neverthe
less, I would not have the diocese without one George
Anthony Denison — but only one. That is quite enough :
as Napoleon said of the impulsive Vandamme, " I would
not part with him for anything, but if I had two Van-
dammes, I must make one shoot the other." In fact, I can
no more imagine two Denisons in one diocese than two
game-cocks in one farmyard. He can fight, and he likes
fighting. He fancies, too, the world and the Church, and
all his clerical neighbours, including Archdeacon Browne,
41

42 The Church-Goer.
are going wrong, and would go more wrong, but for his
interference. He does not, however, with Hamlet, think it
" a wretched spite,
That ever he was born to set them right ;"
for I don't know that he would not prefer matters went a
little wry occasionally, rather than that he had no oppor
tunity of trying to mend them.
At home, however, in his own parish and pulpit, no one
can be more good-tempered and genial ; and there every
body likes him. I heard him on a Sunday preaching to
the farmers and cow-keepers of that rich parish, which
yields him a thousand a year for his services, and he spoke
to them with a homely plainness that had about it the
familiar smack of household words, as though he paused
in his parish walk to talk to them through their open
dairy windows, or over their cheese vats. To be sure,
nothing would be more out of place than polemics to a
congregation of East Somerset yeomen ; but it is surpris
ing, when the odium theologicum takes possession of a man,
how little he can keep in mind the suitability of time and
place. The vicar of East Brent, however, is not combative
on small occasions ; there is somewhat of errantry in his
pugnacity. He goes from home when he wants fighting,
and, sooth to say, he cannot well live without it. When
there is any danger of his "growing mouldy" amongst the
fat grazing lands of East Somerset for "want of a beating,"
he puts a sermon on consubstantiation in his pocket, calls
to his groom to bring round his horse to the front door,
and in a few minutes more is galloping off on the dusty
highroad to Wells, where he flings his defiant discourse,
like a hand grenade, from the cathedral pulpit amongst
a critical congregation, and soon rejoices in a row to his
heart's content. Or else Oxford offers an election contest,
or the Lower House a controversy, and the railroad carries
him to the scene of conflict, where his voice is soon heard
high above the battle. When all is over, he returns to
East Brent, as harmless as an exploded bombshell.
"An ecclesiastical Garibaldi, by Jove, in his Caprera
retirement ! " I said to myself, as I watched the fine-look
ing fighting archdeacon after service come forth from the

Archdeacon Denison at Home. 43
south porch and saunter, with his curate and some young
neighbour, across the flowery churchyard, under the great
trees, towards that lovely parsonage, which, with the white
old church, makes altogether one of the most perfect paro
chial pictures which even Somersetshire, rich in such pic
tures, presents. East Brent is an English Auburn, with this
material difference, that its parson is " passing rich " on
a thousand instead of " forty pounds a year " ; an amount
by the way — I mean the forty pounds — which, however
pleasantly it may sound in poetry, I consider with every
respect for Oliver Goldsmith, quite out of place in these
days, when beef and mutton are eightpence a pound.
Just where the green descending sides of the Knoll meet
the pastures of the plain, the church and parsonage stand ;
the churchyard with its grey headstones and its bright
flower-beds being a part of the beautiful green hill slopes,
with its row of spreading trees. Indeed, I never saw a
parish in which a man might be a parson under pleasanter
circumstances than in East Brent, speaking as the phrase
is, "in a mere worldly sense." There is, however, an old
commercial friend of mine in Bristol, who says the Record
ing Angel keeps his books by double entry; and a " Dr."
and "Cr." account for East Brent with £1,000 a year on
one side requires a good many small items of service on
the other to make a balance. Not that the venerable
George Anthony, who is a fine honest generous fellow in
his way, ready to work though dreadfully given to fight
ing, would not willingly return as much value for the
money in parochial labour as any one, if he had it to do ;
but when you contrast the work — all the work — to be done
in a pastoral parish like this, having only a sparse popula
tion and few farm-houses, with a great teeming town dis
trict, where vice and intemperance grow as luxuriantly
in crowded courts and back slums as green crops in the
stiff lands under the Knoll, and then remember how many
a clergyman is toiling in our howling populous wildernesses
from morning till night for less than a fifth of the income
of the Vicar of East Brent — and this not paid with the
regularity of the Funds, but precariously and unplea
santly — you cannot help thinking that the poor town
parson's account is more easily balanced ; even though

44 The Church-Goer.
George Anthony should throw, not one but two sensational
harvest homes — if it were possible in the year — into the
bargain. Next Thursday will be one of those show days,
when the archdeacon will sound the Banz des Vaches, not
only for the cow- keepers of East Brent, but for all the
lovers of "fine old English customs," all the High Church
dilettanti of the surrounding counties, to come and see a
monster1 Cheddar cheese brought in with full choral ac
companiments, and a grand procession of plum puddings
arranged to the Gregorian chant. Not that I mean for
one moment to find fault with these jolly Christian
celebrations to Ceres : none but a grim, ill-conditioned
curmudgeon would do so. They make a pleasant parish
holiday, somewhat sensational, as I have said, and not a
little to the glory of the incumbent himself — a show day,
in short. But show days are enjoyable, and have their use.
And the Archdeacon of Taunton has a special talent for
these things, as he has for fighting, and harvest homes are
more harmless than controversy. His neighbour Ditcher,
too, on the other side of the Knoll, cannot pull him up for
an after-dinner speech as he could for a Wells, discourse.
The archdeacon might square his fists at Louis Napoleon
and the French for ever, and threaten to pitch them all
into the sea at Burnham, without having the slightest
fear of an ecclesiastical tribunal before his eyes. In short,
if you want to see the Vicar of East Brent in perfection,
go and see him next Thursday. He understands his
parishioners, and his parishioners understand him. Not
his theological refinements — farmers and yeomen do not
trouble themselves about these ; but they understand him
as they do a clever, kind-hearted, downright man, willing
to do a good act for any one, but always insisting upon
his own way of doing it ; and he won't stand nonsense if
he knows it. He has lots of animal spirits, and next to
prayers in the morning, loves a lark in the afternoon.
All these qualities come prominently into play at harvest
homes, of which the Archdeacon of Taunton may be said
to be the great revivalist. He has many imitators, but
none of them approach him in the facility of keeping up
the rural character of the feast, while making it a fashion
able show day for the county, so that parliamentary candi-

Archdeacon Denison at Home. 45
dates actually come to his gatherings, as they would to a
great fair, to sun themselves in the eyes of their hoped-
for constituents. By-and-by, perhaps, too, itinerant
razor-sellers will bring their wares there, as they do to
American camp revival meetings, and booths for the sale
of small merchandise be pitched for the day on the green
slopes of East Brent.
He has clearly a picturesque eye for a mediaeval model
parish. The very graves in the churchyard, with its
velvety turf, are flower-beds, so that death itself seems
to smile from those plats of purple immortelles bordered
with bright pelargoniums. As I crossed this beautiful
burying-gronnd, three or four farmers sat on the steps of
he ancient cross, seemingly enjoying the soft perfume of
the surrounding parterres while listening to the chanted
sounds of the Te Deum, which reached them through
the open south entrance. They were having an out-of-
door service in a very pleasant fashion, I have no doubt,
and having no fear of the worthy gentleman whom I sat
next, and who apparently brought his umbrella to church
for no other purpose but to poke up the sleepy schoolboys
in front of us, accompanying the act with minatory shak
ings of the fist, which obviously meant, "See if you don't
catch it after service is over ! " So, at least, the boys in
terpreted it, for they levanted with remarkable celerity
as soon as the benediction was pronounced, I presume to
get out of the way of the proprietor of the formidable
umbrella. It is a very interesting old church, well and
tastefully cared for — not tawdrily decked out. The chan
cel is richly coloured and gilded, and the altar, altar-cloth,
etc., highly embellished and embroidered. There are two
large candlesticks with candles. Those who wish to con
sider them as ornaments may do so and welcome, but
they have clearly a reasonable and practical use also in
a village innocent of gas, for they are lighted when it is
dark and candles are wanted, and only then. To do the
vicar justice, indeed, I believe he is not a man who would
stand upon trifles of ecclesiastical furniture, or set a parish
by the ears for the sake of a couple of brass candlesticks,
if a parish were foolish enough to fly in a rage about
anything so small. No; he'll fight for principles, or

46 The Church-Goer.
what he thinks principles, to the " bitter end, " and
enjoy the conflict too, but he has,. I think, a soul above
brass candlesticks.
I asked a man whom I met on my way to church, at
what times there was service. " Morning and evening, "
he said, " on Sunday ; other days, I believe," he added, in
a tone that showed he did not appreciate the privilege,
" they do go up a couple of times there for what they do
call prayers. " From a more intelligent and less apathetic
parishioner, I subsequently learned that the bell rings
out regularly throughout the week — in the morning at
half-past eight, in the evening at six — for service, and
that for the size of the village there may be seen most
times a fair attendance of worshippers seated in the carved
open benches, for pew there was none that I could see in
the old church of East Brent.

Dtsbop CrUttrott at ft. Sfrpjmi's, Bristol.*
HE did it all himself ! Nothing wonderful, perhaps, in
this ; as a bishop might discharge, without loss of
dignity or special merit, the humblest work of a curate.
He is best paid, too, and ought to work best. Still,
you do not often see the head of the diocese doing all
alone and unsupported the service of a parish church.
There is not, I know, one of the Right Reverend Bench
that would not do so to assist a sick brother clergyman —
for they are all brothers, bishops, priests, and deacons — •
if he thought of it ; but it is for the consideration evidenced
in the act that I commend his Lordship of Gloucester and
Bristol. There was Dr. Monk — I am not going to decry
him : he had many good points. He was good-natured
and a good Grecian, and wore no buttons to his pockets,
so that there was little difficulty in getting at them for
any good cause or object. Yet he was a man you would
never expect to see on a wet wintry night, down in one of
the Bristol churches, merely to lend a helping hand to
an incumbent confined to his bed by sickness. At least,
if he ever did anything of the kind, I never saw him or
heard of his doing it. He never thought of it, perhaps,
and if he did think of it, there was a certain stately
formality, a slow-moving college-don sort of dignity about
him, and which belonged to the bishops of his school,
that would have made it difficult for him to set about
doing it, though nothing wanting in kindness of heart.
This facility and flexibility, this readiness to put his
hand to anything and everything, from the burying of a
pauper child to preaching a sermon before her Majesty by
* Dr. Ellicott was appointed Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol in
1863, having previously for three years held the Deanery of Exeter.
47

48 The Church-Goer.
royal command, belong more especially to the modern
bishop — I might better perhaps say the recent bishop.
He moves quicker, has a keener eye for every-day work,
understands the practical spirit of the age, and knows
that this very ready-handedness is a quality that suits the
times and popularizes the office. He has taught himself
to move without his carriage, the couple of fat bays, and
the purple liveries ; he can put on his leathern gaiters
and walk, or get into a fly, if it is wet. The prelate of
the present day, in fact, is a person not a personage. He
may be met occasionally carrying his own carpet-bag, or
eating his hasty luncheon out of a sandwich hox in a rail
way station, or riding across country to be in time for
a consecration, when he has missed his train. Your new
race of Episcopi do not wear wigs, and therefore need
encumber themselves with no wig-boxes ; while they
move so fast that they leave the macemen, vergers and
apparitors far behind them.
I must not, however, be understood from this to say
that they are superior to the good old bishops of former
times ; but they differ from them, as the new times differ
from the old times. I speak of the old bishops, who
wrote the great old books — the bishops of profound
learning and princely liberality, who could give their
substance to the poor and their bodies to be burned for
what they believed to be the truth. The bishop of the
present day has that out-of-door activity which we missed
in his immediate predecessor, — the sort of activity the
want of which in the prelates of his time, Latimer — a real
worker himself — so strongly set forth in his sermon of
the "Plough."
Brightly outlining the Gothic tracery of aisle and
clerestory windows, the gas-light illuminated the whole
south side of St. Stephen's, showing it by night, as it is
by day, the most beautiful of all the Bristol parish
churches, next to St. Mary Redcliff. There has been some
talk of late of reducing the number of city churches, and
effacing to some extent that peculiarity which makes
Bristol pre-eminently " Our mother city, thick with towers,"

Bishop ElUcott at St. Stephen's, Bristol. 49
to quote a picturesque line of Tennyson in the " Princess."
But, so far as St. Stephen's is concerned, and I was able
to judge from the congregation, the sole palliation for such
desecration that could possibly be cited — namely, there
not being sufficient parishioners to occupy them all — is
not well founded. It is true, a little paragraph of a couple
of lines, which crept into the Saturday paper, might have
added to the worshippers on this occasion, but to the
practised eye of a Bristolian the character of the congre
gation was parochial. Besides, the night was certainly
not favourable for large attendances. The rain fell
heavily, the lamps on the Quay could hardly light up the
murky waters of the Float, and the thick, dull atmosphere
muffled the sounds of the church bells; so that, as the
rain beat upon his parlour window-pane, and the citizen
poked his pleasant fire into a blaze, you can easily imagine
him finding an excuse for staying at home, if he were not
a very regular or a very determined church-goer.
By his lawn sleeves you might know him to be a bishop,
as Dr. Ellicott came with quick step, unattended, from
the vestry, and entered the reading-desk. 1 could not
help thinking myself, such an evening as this, free from
state and prelatic ceremony, must have been a treat to
his lordship, and perhaps recalled to mind those pleasant
old times when he was a young working parson, and
could get into church and out of it without procession
and formality — without churchwardens with gilded wands
bowing to him, or " the man with the silver poker "
walking before him. There was not even the ghost of a
verger to be seen on Sunday night and the good old lady,
the sextoness with the antique bonnet, very sensibly left
his lordship to open and shut the pulpit door for himself.
In fact, save for a few extra yards of finest linen in his
sleeves, you would not have distinguished his lordship in
his mode of officiating from the plainest curate at £80 a
year. He was there, in fact, not as bishop but as parson,
setting his brother parsons of the city and diocese a good
example to help one another at all times, and especially in
times of illness.
But if he was not the bishop in his sermon, he was the
divine : not too learned or too profound for his audience, E

50 The Church-Goer.
but still he gave us something different from that excellent
pulpit common-place called a plain practical discourse.
Good and useful in its way, I admit, a plain practical dis
course is, but you can get that at most times, I am happy
to say, in our English churches, from your ordinary parson
or painstaking curate. When, however, a bishop, who
has obtained a mitre for his theological learning and his
controversial acuteness, comes casually amongst us, we
are glad to get a taste of his quality — something we do
not get every day. After all, there was a certain pro
portion of sense in the reply of the old Somersetshire
farmer to a brother rustic, as they returned from church,
after hearing their new parson for the first time. His
reverence had been giving them a little more of the
"original" during his discourse than they were in the
habit of hearing from their old rector, who was very much
of the same mind as Goldsmith's professor, that he could
relish and digest his dinner without Greek. One agricul
turist thought " their new parson " might give them a
little less fine learning, which none of them understood,
" unless it be the squire." " I do not think so," was the
other rustic's reply ; " when I pays the parson, I likes the
best he has got to give me for my money." Here we had
in the pulpit Dr. Ellicott, the author of at least a dozen
learned books on the sacred Scriptures, to say nothing
of his share in that bishop-making volume, " The Aids
to Faith," and I should not complain if the congregation
were dissatisfied did he descend from the pulpit without
giving them something more than a mere moral discourse.
It was a very interesting, thoughtful sermon, suggestive,
and, in parts, almost mystic. It is true the application
was plain enough — plain as the pile of half-quartern loaves
that were placed at the entrance of the church, and which
carried our minds back to those practical days when the
well-to-do parishioner seldom thought of going out of the
world without leaving a dole or donation for the poor, or
something for a gift sermon, that he might not be wholly
forgotten. The bishop took for his text a part of the
second verse of the second chapter of St. Paul's Epistle
to the Ephesians, " The spirit that now worketh in the
.children of disobedience."

Bishop Ellicott at St. Stephen's, Bristol. 51
In saying the sermon was somewhat mystical, I may
not express my meaning clearly, or even correctly. Per
haps it was mystical only so far as it produced an effect
of that kind upon myself. We are so full of spiritualism
now-a-days, that even a sermon may suggest the subject,
and a passing allusion send us dreamily wandering into
shadow land. I thought the topic was not without its
fascination, even for the bishop himself. When speculat
ing on that sublime but mysterious sentence in the same
verse, " the prince of the power of the air," he expressed
his belief that the reference was to evil spirits, over
whom Satan personally reigned, and whose habitation
was in the air — above our heads — and from which they
exercised their malign influence on the children of men.
He told us that the word which signified " air " here was
not of frequent occurrence in the New Testament, but
was used again in another passage, which, while it con
firmed its signification here, carried comfort with it to the
Christian, who was encouraged by knowing that those
demoniacal agencies would be driven from their present
place of abode on the coming of the Lord. In Thessa
lonians, it is said, speaking of this great event, " Then we
which are alive and remain shall be caught up together
with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air : and
so shall we ever be with the Lord." It was the same
word in both the texts, and that "air," which was now
the habitation of evil spirits, would become the abode of
the blest when Satan and his angels were driven forth
and dispersed.
I do not profess to give the bishop's words, but this
was their effect, as I understood them. The congregation
were manifestly much interested in the subject ; and for
us all the theory has a fascination — that there is a spiritual
world around and above, and nearer and more closely in
contact with us, than our material natures will allow us
to discern. For this reason, with religious people, the
" cloud of witnesses " has, for its suggestiveness, ever been
a favourite subject for reflection or reverie. I glanced
round me whilst his lordship was enlarging on this passage,
and was struck with the keen expression of interest
that marked every countenance. Evening sermons, I am

52 The Church-Goer.
afraid, too often, if they do not invite to, are accompanied
by somnolency, and in this very church of St. Stephen's
moulder the ashes of Edward Blanket, the inventor of
that piece of bed furniture which has so much to do with
sleep. Nevertheless, not a drowsy sensation was traceable
in a single face on either side of me, while the dissertation
on the Prince of the Power of the Air was proceeding ; so
that we see there is, after all, a way of exciting the
interests of a congregation which will keep even an after-
dinner audience from nodding at a sermon.

% Iftornmcj's gttbitt at % Manor's Cjnipel.
IN France, according to Sydney Smith, they have three
genders, " men, women, and clergymen " ; but if there
be any satire against the cloth insinuated in this classifi
cation, it certainly does not apply to the bead of the
Bristol Chapter, Dean Elliot. Manners are said to be the
" shadows of virtues " ; and he is not only manly in his
manner, but the tone of his mind and the spirit of his
theology are manly. This trait in his character I have
seldom seen more prominently put forth than when he
preached for the Mayor at St. Mark's Chapel ; and though
this is the second time he has complied with the chief
magistrate's request to take the pulpit of the old Gaunts
for a Sunday, he is, within my memory at least, the first
dignitary of the Cathedral that has done so.
The little Mayor's Chapel, indeed — in this respect of
having nearly all the local clergy in succession on Sundays
— is a most eclectic place of worship ; for here every kind
of Churchman can get himself suited in a preacher after
his own heart or party, on some morning or another during
the Mayoralty. The high and the low, the high-dried and
the low-dried, the broad and the narrow, the narrow and
the broad, have only to watch the paragraphs in the local
papers to be able to find a sermon to suit each : and even
the medium man, who declares that he is the only one
who experiences a difficulty in meeting with a preacher
to his mind, by going the year round may easily strike an
average amongst the whole, and bringing with him his
own amalgam, extract the desired moderation from all put
together. When Reuben Butler delivered his grace at
the feast of Knocktarlitie, Captain Knockdunder declared
it too long, and David Dean censured it as too short,
63

54 The Church-Goer.
"from which," says the narrator, "the charitable reader
may conclude, it was just the proper length." Of many
sermons, the same thing may be said as of the minister's
blessing, but the next thing to getting the juste milieu in
doctrine out of a single discourse is making it out of
many. The presence of a dean of the cathedral church of
Saint Augustine in the pulpit of the Gaunts has an his
torical significance in it, for those who have read anything
of the ecclesiastical chronicles of Bristol ; as a large
portion of the ancient records of St. Mark's are taken up
in the relation of rows between it and its big brethren at
the Abbey opposite. It is late in the day to go into the
particulars of the old accounts which Bishops of Worcester
and other visitors had to settle between the two fraterni
ties, who, like many other people, were nothing the better
friends for being near neighbours. The abbot was
always backing up and abetting his protege, the Vicar of
St. Augustine-the-Less, in his attempts to run away with
the rights, or, what was the same thing, with the bodies
of those who lived and died within the bounds of the
Hospital of St. Mark. Now, nobody will imagine that
Vicar Chew (for that was the name of the first trans
gressor) bolted off with the corpses of defunct citizens
with any cannibalish intention, however unfortunately
voracious his name; nor, if such were his intention,
probably would the Bonnes Homes (for by this name the
brethren of the Gaunts were called), have interfered with
his tastes. But there were sundry dues and offerings,
that accompanied the privileges of sepulture, which those
who got hold of the deceased enjoyed, and over such
pecuniary prizes the holy monks of old would sometimes
fight like game-cocks. It appears this freebooting Vicar
Chew — whose motto might well be that of the resurrec
tionist man, Be mortuis nil nisi bone'em — selected Palm
Sunday, in the year 1420, for his grandest feat of body-
snatching : so, with some fellows at his back, and armed
with shovels and pickaxes, he made a sortie across the
Green into the cemetery of St. Mark's Hospital, and dug up
three bodies, namely, those (for the record of the transac
tion is still preserved) of one William Leach, one Andrew

A Morning's Service at the Mayor's Chapel. 55
Hutchins, and an old lady — a Mistress Christian Hore.
Vicar Chew, having got them out of the ground of the
Bonnes Homes, found them graves in his own churchyard,
and, by way of requiting himself for all this unnecessary
trouble, seized dues to the value of one hundred shillings
— a booty probably in which his patron, the Abbot of
Saint Augustine, went halves with him. But Master
Chew's mal-practices did not end here. The Hutchinses
appear to have been old parishioners of St. Mark, and
Vicar Chew's intrigues and violences found a field
amongst that family, for he next induced Mrs. Sybil
Hutchins, who lived and was confined within the pre
cincts of St. Mark's, to come over to his church for the
usual service after child-birth, thereby reaping a con
siderable harvest of wax tapers and other obventions
which the Bonnes Homes believed to be theirs by right.
All these irregularities were brought before the proper
authorities, and Vicar Chew, to escape excommunication,
had to hand over to the brethren of St. Mark's the money
and the candles he had defrauded them of, and Messrs.
Leach and Hutchins, with old Mistress Hore, whose bones
seemed destined to have little rest amongst those pugna
cious priests, were again dug up, carried across the Green
once more, and a second time interred in the cemetery of
St. Mark's.
Another bone of contention between the Gaunts and St.
Augustine was the Green, which intervened between the
two establishments. They squabbled over the right of
feeding sheep and burying bodies in that pleasant area,
and I have a fancy on my mind that the former disputed
point was never definitely settled ; and that the Mayor,
who may be said to inherit some of the privileges of his
predecessors, the priests of the Gaunts, might, in common
with the dean and chapter, exercise his rights as a
grazier on the Green. As a means, at least, of trying the
point, I should advise him to purchase a couple of wethers,
and turn them out among the capitular flock, that now,
with fleeces almost as black as though they were intended
to furnish cloth of the clerical colour alone, feed under the
canonical limes. The pastoral office would not, after all,
harmonise badly with the civic one, and a haunch of his

56 _ The Church-Goer.
Worship's Bristol-fed mutton, at a Council House feast,
would be a home delicacy. If the Bonnes Homes had the
right of commonage on the Green, it would have been
only fair, and some little compensation for the invidious
badge or device, which they were compelled to carry
about on their black mantles and cowls, namely, three
geese passant on a field gules, which, though the arms of
their patron's house, were certainly by no means a desir
able blazonry, even though the historic services of that
bird, at the Capitol of Rome, cannot be denied. Such
heraldry was suggestive of local satire, and I daresay
there was not wanting amongst their enemies at St.
Augustine's some pedant to suggest a hissing contrast, in
the words of the poet, — ¦
Veluti anser inter cygnos sonores.
I have sometimes thought that these Bonnes Homes
could have been no better than they ought to be ; for one
of their ordinances was that whenever they went into the
town they should wear their black caps with the cackling
crest inscribed thereon, so that, doubtless, amongst the
jokers of the day they went by the name, and were pos
sibly known in the neighbouring streets, as Gaunts' Geese.
In the contest between the brethren of St. Mark's and the
Black Canons of St. Augustine's, the latter established one
right, that of mowing the grass in the Green, which grass
was used not for feeding their ox or their ass, but for the
purpose of being strewn, carpet-like, on the nave and
choir of the Abbey on state occasions, in the same fashion
as rushes are still strewn on Whit Sunday in St. Mary
Redcliff. In short, there is not a church in Bristol whose history
has more quaint passages in it than that of St. Mark's,
whose memorials must have been well preserved, since
Barrett tells us of large manuscript volumes of records,
of which he had the run. There are still extant some
strange accounts of their mode of dispensing alms, elect
ing masters, etc. On one occasion, if I mistake not, a
monk of the opposite Abbey was chosen to be their chief,
and being borne on the shoulders of the Bonnes Homes
across the Green, and laid out by them on the altar of St,

A Morning's Service at the Mayor's Chapel. 57
Mark, he received the obeisances of the brethren while in
this horizontal position. The little chapel is still^shadowy
with the remembrance of the past, being one of those
buildings which, standing in a commercial city, are calcu
lated to keep alive a kind of bourgeois sense of aristocratic
pride, being at once a place of trade and antiquity. Go
ahead as you like, gentlemen of the fleet North — build
your institutes, your assembly-rooms, and your music-
halls, and all that modern pace and enterprise call for ; but
the absence of those old Gothic fanes, which fill slow
Bristol, will still stamp you as topographical parvenues.
An eloquent American said that his own country "was
white- washed over by unmeaning names, the cast-off
clothes of the country from which its emigrants came, or
named at a pinch from a psalm tune " ; but the chapel of
the Gaunts has no modern rawness in its name. It
savours of times before the Tudors, and as the fog of
Sunday morning further dimmed its pictured windows
and deepened the adumbrations of the old place, it seemed
so gentlemanly a specimen of ancient obscurity, that it
almost gave a Venetian character to the two rows of
Town Councillors that sat in the Gothic shadows of little
St. Mark's.
The effect of the paragraph in the papers announcing
the Dean as the preacher for the morning, was evident in
the crowded appearance of the chapel. Old Mrs. Vickery
was driven to her wits' end to seat everybody, and when
she came to her wits' end had to begin again, for still
there were numbers unaccommodated. In the recent com
petitions for vacant Sees, it was said of Dr. Elliot, that
" he would not (as a wit remarked of Coke of Leicester
and a coronet) disdain to hide his head " in a mitre ; but I
do not think I should rejoice in the luck that made him a
prelate and lost us a preacher, for to my mind there are
few men whom, having once heard, you would more like to
hear again. It was one of the Dean's best discourses, prac
tical and searching, and possessed in a great degree that
quality which characterises more or less all his sermons,
I mean, manliness — a sound healthy frankness that will
have nothing to do with a sham, whether it be in rhetoric
or religion. Some time ago, a citizen of Bristol told me,

58 The Church-Goer.
he was passing through Clare Street, when he saw a
crowd suddenly and tumultuously gather round two
fellows, giving unmistakable indications of a street fight.
One of the combatants went down, but the victor, not
content with felling him to the earth, kicked his fallen
adversary in the face, causing blood to flow from his
mouth. " Shame ! " cried the crowd, but still the fellow
kicked on, and might have continued to do so, but that
a strong arm was laid on his collar, and he was whirled
away from bis victim. " What, you coward, kick a man
when down! " said he who had come to the rescue ; " say
you are ashamed and sorry for it, or you shall go to the
police-station." The fellow would do nothing of the kind ;
he would neither apologise nor be made a prisoner, and as
there was no policeman near, he doubtless thought he
should carry his point ; however, there was not a man in
the force more capable of taking charge of the bully than
he in whose hands he was. " Since there is no policeman
here, I will be policeman myself," says his captor, and
the next moment the kicker was walked off in the firm
grip of the Dean of Bristol. This street incident, which I
had from an eye-witness, illustrates the man's character
— if you can understand such a thing — and gives a key to
the spirit of his preaching.
* There is a neat mot of Dean Elliot's still preserved. When the
present Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, Dr. Ellicott, was appointed
to the See, the similarity of the two names caused it at first to be
reported that the head of the Bristol chapter was the new prelate :
on being congratulated however upon the promotion, he answered
with quiet humour, " No, no ; I'm Elliot without tlie c [see)."

(Tbe QitcLX ai liempsforir amongst tlje
|T\ altrtimri.es.
AN TJN-TEETOTAL TEXT.
[Some interest has been added to the following paper, from tbe
change in the condition of the subject of it, after it was written in
the summer of 1856 ; the then Vicar of Kempsford having been pro
moted to the See of Ely, in December, 1873, on the translation of
Dr. Harold Browne to Winchester. Bishop Woodford died in 1886,
at the age of sixty-six. For five years previous to his elevation to
the episcopal bench, he held the important position of Vicar of Leeds.]
MOST of my readers are by this time aware that the
Rev. J. R. Woodford, who for some years habitually
officiated amongst the winged lions of St. Mark, in the
little Norman church of Easton, Bristol, has for the last
twelve months or so, been converted from a district in
cumbent, under Peel's Act, into a rich Wiltshire Vicar,
whose time is divided between the care of a limited flock
and the pot-culture of seakale. When our young Chry-
sostom was known to have accepted the bishop's offer,
and to be about to carry his "golden mouth" into a
country parish, loud was the wail of his admirers — of the
people who rolled in flys or trudged on foot, in order
to hear his florid and fanciful exercitations on winter
evenings, when, in a mere chapelry amongst a poor popu
lation the ritual pomp of a cathedral was imitated, as
far as sacred song and linen surplice and gold-leafed
mural legend would allow. Loud, I say, was their wail
that the eloquence which had filled urban churches and
packed them to the outer porch, should be transplanted
into a sphere of green crops and cattle, where the dull
squire, the heavy grazier, and the rustic labourer would
be the only listeners. Some of his votaries were indeed

60 The Church-Goer.
reasonable enough to suggest at the time, through the
public prints, that he should stick to gas-light, and glory,
and £150 a year on the skirts of Bristol, rather than
accept £800 per annum, a glebe house and garden with
wall fruit, and have for his hearers persons who might
snore through one of his best pictured passages. How
ever, it has become such a general commercial axiom,
" that supply will attract demand," one is not astonished
to learn that the principle maybe traced in operation
even to the matter of preaching; and a friend, who
happened to be a few Sundays since at Fairford, which
is the nearest town to Kempsford, and who was tempted
to visit the ex-minister of St. Mark's in his rustic retreat,
assured me he was marvellously surprised to find that,
even in that country quarter, people could so quickly
find him out. For a circle of several miles, every vehicle
seemed to be in requisition, and carriage, coburg, white-
chapel, tilbury, and milk-cart were chartered and em
ployed to convey their complement of bearers to the old
church, whose ancient sun-dial seemed to smile in in
credulous surprise at finding its grey walls enclosing that
once thought only city luxury, a popular preacher. " I
won't be so profane, sir," exclaimed my informant, " to
say that the crush of vehicles along the road suggested
the idea of the Derby to me, but the number of traps and
horses, with their heads in nose bags, that blocked up
the way in front of the edifice, as I came out, convinced
me people in the country could have itching ears as well
as people in a town."
Nevertheless, though public interest in his own neigh
bourhood will not allow the Vicar of Kempsford to grow
intellectually lazy, he is no more to be confined exclu
sively within his pastoral limits than was young Norval
to his flock among the Grampian Hills. Curiosity drew
a friend into the mediseval St. Barnabas, London, during
one of the late Lenten services there ; when whom should
he see in the pulpit, pouring forth his thick-coming
fancies to a crowd of High Church patricians and West-
end beauties, Argyle's Duchess, and Bath's Dowager
Marchioness, but the Wiltshire vicar, who, after he has
prepared a stock of pulpit pyrotechny in his quiet

The Vicar of Kempsford amongst the Kalendaries. 61
country parsonage, wishes, perhaps, with a little of the
pride not wholly confined to those engaged in secular
literature, to get as large a company as possible together,
when the brilliant composition is let off. Bristol, with
its old churches, has still attractions for him, and his
brother clergy here will still be borrowing his services, as
did the Vicar of All Saints on a recent Sunday, when
Mr. Woodford preached two sermons in that church in
aid of the Mission of Dr. Armstrong, Bishop of Graham's
Town, South Africa.
The little old fane of the Kalendars looked bright and
lively in the morning sun, and a large bouquet of flowers
was jauntily stuck in the breast of tbe white marble
coat of the recumbent statue of Edward Colston. All the
chairs were brought out from the vestry into the chancel,
and some were borrowed from the neighbours, to accommo
date the expected influx of the preacher's admirers from
all parts. The parishioners were dreadfully patronising,
and, instead of thanking yon for airing their cushions,
gave you a seat in their pews, with a look as if they
expected you to be under as great an obligation to them
for the same as though they had asked you to dinner.
For my own part, I was permitted, in the sight of one
unoccupied family pen, to seat myself on a form in tbe
aisle, where my dignity was very much hurt, and my
legs miserably cooled. For a moment I was disposed to
visit this affront to my feelings on the Mission to Souht
Africa, and I poked away into the corner of my pocket
the premeditated contribution, and moved up a smaller
coin within finger reach ; but, before the discourse was
ended, my hurt pride was happily salved.
Ere, however, I allude to the end of the discourse, it
is well to say what the beginning of it was, and I'll be
bound there was not a single person in the church, save
the preacher himself, whom the text did not take by
surprise — who was not, so to speak, "knocked in a heap"
by his first, sentence. You must bear in mind that the
object for which his advocacy was required was the
Mission to South Africa, as represented in tbe person
of the Right Reverend Dr. Armstrong, Lord Bishop of
Graham's Town. To those who have ever heard Mr.

62 The Church-Goer.
Woodford I need not describe his manner of ascending
the pulpit, as with hasty steps, drooped head, and stooped
shoulders, his light hair falling over his eyes, he hurried
up the stair. Opening his black sermon case, and
flattening it on the velvet cushion with an energetic
push, he gave out these words in deep and hasty gut
turals : " Drink no longer water, but use a little wine,
for thy stomach's sake, and thine often infirmities."
Every person in the church looked at his or her neigh
bour in astonishment, and for myself, I utterly mistrusted
the accuracy of my ears until he repeated the words,
adding 1st Tim., chap. 5, verse 23. " What did he say,
sir ? " said a woman at my elbow, referring to her Bible
with some perplexity. " He said, ma'am," I answered,
" ' Drink no longer water, but use a little wine, for thy
stomach's sake, and thine often infirmities.' " " What
a strange text!" was the good woman's natural obser
vation ; and what it could have to do with the church in
South Africa every one wondered, unless, indeed, the
admonition was pointedly directed to Bishop Armstrong,
and meant to rebuke his too great devotion to the
principles of Priessnitz and hydropathy.
Only that one cannot associate the shades of the de
parted with the sunshine of the morning, I could have
fancied a whole host of Kalendar priests peeping through
the ceiling lights (which are peculiar to this edifice),
their noted brother Robert Rickart, the old priest town
clerk at their head, with a broad expression of pleased
surprise on their bewigged faces, as depicted in the
vignette seal of the late Henry Rogers' history of the
Kalendars. For this, like every other clerical guild or
company of their time, was jovially inclined, and its
members would have certainly fallen in with the moral
of Mr. Woodford's text on Sunday, if we are to judge
from an old deed belonging to them, and partly copied
into this paper some years ago. In it, amongst the items
charged, in a general annual obiit for all good doers,
there are inventoried " three gallons of sack," " three
gallons of claret," to help the vicar and priests in their
pious offices for the departed, with " two dozen of singing
ale," for the choristers. From which one may imagine

The Vicar of Kempsford amongst the Kalendaries. 63
that even in their most sepulchral mood, the Kalendar
monks were as little devoted to the use of water as any
one could wish them to be. Indeed, the good gentlemen
were so disposed to carry their hospitalities too far, that
in the reign of Edward IV. an entry appears amongst
their constitutions and ordinances, correcting the excess
by altogether prohibiting one feast in the following
words : — " Item — Whereas yt hath ben yerly usyd afor
ys tyme that on Corpus Christi day on ye Churche coste
ye Procutars to geve a dyner unto ye vycar and to ye
Priestys and to ye Clerkys, yt ys nowe agreed and or-
deynyd yt fro hensforward ye dyner to be lefte."
The reader is, I suppose, by this time, impatient to
learn how, after all, he made the 23rd verse of the 5th
chapter of 1st Timothy applicable to the subject of the
Mission in South Africa. That he would do so, 1 had
not a moment's doubt. Like many men of vivid fancy
and artistic ingenuity, I think Mr. Woodford delights in
such surprises — loves to show how, by a cunning and
dexterous feat of intellect, he can bend the seemingly
most inappropriate text to the object in hand — work it
round in devious fashion to a given point. This has been
a peculiarity of venturous minds amongst nonconformists
as well as in the Church, and is, after all, in subtle hands
not perhaps so difficult as some think. The late John Fos
ter, the Baptist minister, and well-known author of the
"Essays on Popular Ignorance," was fond of this, as some of
his hearers called it, " intellectual trick "; and once, I am
told, he preached for a school charity, from the 21st verse
of the 37th chapter of Exodus, " And a knop under two
branches of the same, and a knop under two branches of
the same, and a knop under two branches of the same,
according to the six branches going out of it." It is too
long to explain how he brought these "knops" (which, the
reader will remember, were parts of the candlestick of the
holy place), to bear upon an educational question, but he
proceeded, in a manner at once quaint and picturesque,
to illustrate the systems of instruction from those symbols
of light. In the same way, Mr. Woodford worked the
homely injunction of St. Paul to the newly-chosen Bishop
of Ephesus, with his often infirmities, round to bear upon

64 The Church-Goer.
the personal and official trials of those who are called to
the colonial episcopacy; and, once in the groove, he went
rolling and ringing down it like a ball of musical metal.
It was but to get the end of the reel of thread, and you
could yourself run through the labyrinthal maze of fancy,
as though it were a familiar footpath. This passage in
St. Paul's Epistle to Timothy, Mr. Woodford quoted as
one of two instances amongst many of the internal
evidences of the truth of the Scriptures from the occur
rences of little touches of nature, which utterly discoun
tenanced the idea of invention, and could only be the
result of truth. "The object of the apostle in writing,
was to give directions to Timothy for the proper man
agement of the Church over which he presided. Now
what should we expect in a letter between such persons ?
Injunctions for the maintenance of the faith, for the
suppression of vice ; recommendations how to cherish
holiness in the hearts of the new converts, how to
arrange their worship, how to secure their zeal and
stability in their new religion. And such we have. St.
Paul does exhort Timothy to devote himself to one and
all of these points. But in the midst of a chain of
admonitions touching on the highest and most solemn
subjects,- — upon sin and judgment, heaven and hell, — there
occurs a friendly remonstrance upon the young bishop's
over-abstemiousness, ' Drink no longer water ; but use
a little wine, for thy stomach's sake, and thine often
infirmities.' Is it credible that an impostor, sitting down
to forge an epistle in the name of St. Paul, would intro
duce such a passage as this ? Surely not. The sentence
which has perhaps often struck you as strange and
almost unseemly, standing in the midst of the solemn
charge of the aged apostle to his youthful missionary,
breaking the thread of his discourse, is, properly viewed,
the strongest possible proof of the authenticity of the
whole document. No forger would have written in such
a manner. Nothing but reality, nothing but the fact of
Timothy's weak health suddenly occurring to his affection
ate teacher, who elsewhere calls him his ' own son in the
faith,' can account for the existence of a passage of so
domestic a nature in the course of a letter upon the most

The Vicar of Kempsford amongst the Kalendaries. 65
momentous topics which could occupy the human mind."
With such a finger-post as the foregoing extract affords,
it will not be necessary for me to accompany the reader
any further in elucidation of the path which the preacher
took ; for, notwithstanding all its fanciful windings and
rhetorical dips, the eye can still catch the continuous line
of the road, ever and anon breaking into view ; until,
starting from Timothy entering upon the bishopric of
Ephesus, and enjoined by St. Paul to " use a little wine
for his stomach's sake, and his often infirmities," it
terminates in the episcopacy of Graham's Town, and
leads your sympathies and subscriptions to the Right
Rev. Dr. John Armstrong, with whom your journey
ends.* The sermon was doubtless composed under the most
favourable circumstances of literary workmanship, in the
old Wiltshire parsonage — no street rattle of merchant
drays (as it is this moment with myself), or remonstrant
churchwardens (as it is with other incumbents), to disturb
his thoughts or break his thread. The only sounds that
entered his open window were probably from a row of
beehives and their busy denizens, or the mellow lowing
of cattle on the meadow sloping down to the trout stream
¦ — no anxiety about Easter offerings or pew rents, but
eight hundred a year paid quarterly from land in lieu of
tithes' charges. To be able to occupy yourself with the
delights of literary composition in a scene so pastoral ;
then to put the discourse in your pocket, when polished
off — to call Hodge round with the phaeton, to drive to
the Hungerford station, and railing down to old Bristol,
or up to St. Barnabas, to let off the brilliant piece of
pulpit pyrotechny in the eyes of a large city congre
gation ! Certes, these comforts considered, if we are to
weigh things in a worldly balance alone, better be the
Vicar of Kempsford than a Bishop of Ephesus, or of
Graham's Town either.
* I have heard that Dr. Woodford said when a young clergyman,
that he always wrote his sermon first, and selected a text for it after
wards. One of Dr. Woodford's most ardent admirers was the late
Bishop Wilberforce, in whose memorials he occupies a prominent
part, but I do not find this peculiarity anywhere referred to therein.
V

The following sketch, giving another incident in the hfe of the
late Bishop of Ely, though written very recently, may not be thought
out of place, or time, as illustrating a very early passage in his
career. MRS. THACKERAY RITCHIE (daughter of the
great novelist), in a pleasant paper on the poet
laureate, which she contributed to Harper's American
Magazine a few years ago, relates this remarkable anecdote
of Tennyson when quite a boy. His grandfather, who
had seen some specimens of his young muse, asked him
to write an elegy on his grandmother, who had recently
died. When it was written, he put ten shdlings into the
lad's hands, saying, " There, that is the first money you
have ever earned by your poetry, and, take my word
for it, it will be the last," — a proof that the old gentleman
had no gift for looking into the future ; though he might
be excused for not guessing that the boy's slightly appre
ciated genius would in time win him fame, wealth, and a
coronet. I was myself witness of an equally haphazard, and, as
far as correctness goeSj equally unhappy prediction, when
the late Bishop of Ely, Dr. Woodford, then a young curate
in the diocese of Gloucester and Bristol, was the subject
of it ; and I do not think I shall offend any one by telling
the story, now that the grave has for some years closed
over the principal and subordinate characters in it.
Tbe curacy and "title" upon which the Rev. James
Russell Woodford was ordained was that of St. John the
Baptist, Bristol; and in the Church-goer's notice of
the quaint old urban parish, we have, I believe, a record
of the first time the future great preacher appeared in

An " Inverted Prophecy." 67
that or any other pulpit. The venerable visitor, in giving
his account of what he saw and heard upon the occasion
of his Sunday call, said, in reference to the preacher, " In
the sermon I experienced an agreeable surprise. It was
by a young man. Everything was so homely around. I
expected a homely discourse also. I will say, however,
that I have not heard a sermon for a long time with
which I have been more struck. He had, as the saying
is, ' well thought np his subject ' ; and while his delivery
(which was too rapid and unvaried) showed practice had
much to perfect in this respect, about his matter there
was that force and freshness which habit and time not
only do not always enhance, but sometimes tame down."
When the ecclesiastical itinerant paid his visit to the
fane " by the gate of good Saint John," its rector was the
Rev. Canon George Neale Barrow, whose genial face and
(I may add without offence) jolly figure, older readers
must still remember. He was the beau ideal of an old
Bristol burgher-parson — a kind-hearted man, a good
parochial worker, and greatly given to hospitality. He
dearly loved to get the members of his vestry around him
in his dining-room on Kingsdown, and was quite in his
element at the top of the table. Hardly ever did an
Easter pass without his getting the " conscript fathers "
of the parish to his pleasant board. Nor was it at Easter
only that these gatherings took place. Any excuse (says
a modern sage) wdl do for a good dinner — a proverb of
which the Rev. George Neale Barrow not unfrequently
took advantage in his large-heartedness. You may be
sure, therefore, that the appointment of a new curate was
too eligible an opportunity for exercising the convivial
virtue to be overlooked by the good-humoured rector.
So, within a week or two after young Woodford delivered
his first sermon, the vestrymen got a welcome summons to
meet him in the accustomed dining-room, and make the
acquaintance of one who was destined to be a distinguished
prelate and pulpit star, but who then was only third
master at the recently- opened Bishop's College at the top
of Park Street.
I was myself at the time one of the " select " of St.
John's, and as I happened to be present on the occasion

68 The Church-Goer.
to which the Church-goer refers, and heard the sermon
that seemed to take his fancy, I was glad to get the
rector's invitation, not only because it was always a most
agreeable party, but also because I wished to have a '
nearer view of one who I thought (if he really had
himself written the discourse he delivered) must be a
man not only of considerable eloquence but audacious
originality. His text was Job ii. 1 and 2 : " There was a
day when the sons of God came to present themselves
before the Lord, and Satan came also among them to
present himself before the Lord . And the Lord said unto
Satan, From whence comest thou ? And Satan answered
the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in the earth,
and from walking up and down in it."
It certainly was a curious text for a just-ordained curate
to take for his first sermon, and the way he treated it
was not less striking; for he said he believed that the
devil actually, in his own personality, travelled about the
earth and visited all its parts and centres of population ;
but that Japan was his favourite abode — in effect, his
head-quarters, where, as one might say (for I am putting
it in my own words), he might be always heard of,
society there being of a kind most congenial to him. — at
once evil and ingenious, dark and subtle, malign and
polished. The going to and fro in the earth, and walking
up and down in it, with the suggestive circumstances, the
preacher treated in tbe graphic and realistic way that
afterwards became so characteristic of his pulpit style, and
which, as we know from his son's " Reminiscences," won
the admiration of Bishop Samuel Wilberforce. I need
hardly add after this that the young curate's estimate of
Satan himself was according to the Miltonic idea of the
" archangel ruined." *
* Not long after the sermon was delivered, I was joking the curate
upon the curious fancy he propounded of " Satan's furnished lodgings
in Japan," and referring to his glowing panegyric upon the high but
baleful genius of the '.'fallen archangel," I said he (Woodford) spoke
of the diabolical personage as though he "were a friend of the
family." I again met the rising pulpit orator not a few times after
he left Bristol, when he was always pleasant and full of quiet fun. It
was my wont on these occasions to ask him " after the friend of the
family " ; and while he never failed to show he understood the allu-

An " Inverted Prophecy." 69
Such was the first effort of the callow curate that we,
the "select" of St. John's, now met. He was pleasant
and bright, of a fair complexion and handsome face, in
which an expression of quiet humour played. The Johnian
vestry of that day was typical of the time-honoured
institutions of Bristol. The " father " was a jolly Church
and Queen man, ready at the shortest notice to take his
stand and rally his colleagues for crown and mitre. He
was (as were a couple of others of the same body) a boot
maker, and in such high repute as a craftsman of Crispin's
order, that he could always command his price, and from
whom it was a favour to obtain a pair of " Wellingtons "
for a couple of guineas. To him, as in duty bound, the
rector first introduced the new curate. Bristolians of the
central city, whose recollection carries them back half a
century, wdl remember Benjamin Evans, of John Street,
whose broad, bon-vivant face and short, stout figure well
became the "father" of such a vestry. He was, I thought,
prepared to be pleased with the new curate, and the new
curate with him. It was therefore with some alarm I
saw the mutual good understanding between them im
perilled by an incident which occurred early in the
dinner. As we sat down the rector invited Woodford to "take
the bottom, of the table " — a post which, of course, in
volved the business of carving ; as it was before the
" Russian " practice of cutting up the joints at the side

sion, he always took it in good humour. I think the last time I saw
him was when he was incumbent of Leeds, in succession to tbe
present Bishop of Hereford, and when his fast-rising fortunes pointed
to a not remote elevation to the episcopal bench. He was as friendly
and full of chat as ever, but as I thought tbe time had come when
my poor joke about that first sermon should cease (as there is a time
to joke as well as a time to stop joking), I said nothing of the old
Satanic fancies founded on the 1st and 2nd verses of Job ii. When
he rose to leave, after nearly an hour's visit, he took up his broad-
brimmed doctor's hat, and looking at me with eyes full of fun as in
former years, he said, "Well, you have forgot to ask for the friend of
the family!" "No," I answered, "I did not forget him; but I
thought, taking into account the changes that have occurred since
I first inquired for him, it is well we treated him after the manner of
poor relations, and cut him for the future."

70 The Church-Goer.
table and serving round had come into fashion. Now, if
there was one thing which the new curate could not do,
or make even a decent attempt at doing, it was carving.
In the table arts and the table routine which the Bris-
tolian citizen so much prized and prizes, Woodford was,
like not a few scholars and studious men, utterly unskilled :
and from what I can hear, he never attained in all the
after stages of his advancement as Church dignitary,
royal chaplain, or prelate of the almost princely See of
Ely, to the convivial accomplishment which, to the social
and municipal mind generally, and of Bristol especially,
is so indispensable. The rector's entertainments were
hearty and homely ; festive plenty, rather than culinary
pedantry, characterising the menu. On this occasion the
bottom dish was fowls to supplement a fine home-cured
ham; for the rector was justly proud of his skill in
saving tbe " Baconian haunch," as a gastronomic coxcomb
once called it. The distressed look with which the new
curate regarded the dish with which he was unexpectedly
confronted, told me at once that my eloquent neighbour
(for I sat next him) was not a practised anatomist of
poultry ; and with thorough frankness he at once said so.
" I can't carve," he exclaimed, " and I wish you would
take my place."
Now, if the truth must be told, I bad not much more
confidence in my own dexterity upon a joint than he had :
so I declined, saying it was the curate's place at a vestry
feast, and he must occupy it. " Why so ? " he inquired.
" Because," I answered, quoting, with a trifling alteration,
the words of Glo'ster to King Henry before he stabs him,
" for this, amongst the rest, were ' you ' ordained."
"Then do tell me how to begin," he pleaded, almost
piteously; for just at that moment the parlour-maid
presented tbe plate of the "father" of the vestry, on
which were two fine slices of the prized ham, to which
he requested might be added the due accompaniment of
fowl. " Cut away," I answered, " as is most convenient to
you — anywhere"; for, as usual with ignorant folks, I
sought safety from my want of knowledge in va^ue
generalities ; " where it is easiest."

An " Inverted Prophecy." 71
He took me literally at my word, and sliced off — nicked
off — the neck close to the breast, serving the respected
" father '' with tbe long skinny portion which, according
to custom, was tucked back under the pinion. There was
no time to correct the error, for before I could interfere,
the girl, upon whose nimble services there was a lively
demand, had placed his "ham and fowl" before the senior
of the select. I shall never forget the look of perplexity,
hurt pride, and annoyance with which old Evans regarded
the plate when it was laid before him. The head of a city
vestry, fifty years ago, was a man of far too much import
ance for one to take a liberty with him ; while anything
in the shape of a practical joke which touched his palate
and the "joys of mastication " would be simply regarded
as almost amounting to parochial profanation. Benjamin
Evans, however, did not dream that the curate was
perpetrating a joke at his expense. He put down the act,
as he did the long sinuous skinny neck, to sheer ignorance
— to which, indeed, I believe, it was partly attributable.
So he called back the girl, and, giving her the plate, told
her to take it again to the young man, the curate, at the
bottom of the table, for a proper helping. " Tell him
from me, too," he added, with emphasis, " he'll never be a
bishop !"
Now you would say, if there could be a prediction more
safe than another, this was one. Here was a young man
just ordained, an assistant-master at a public school. He
might, it is true, in the course of time, be a bishop. It
was just possible, but not according to existing circum
stances at all probable. For all foretaste we bad had of
the future eloquence, which was to make its possessor
before a score years famous over all England, was that
sermon about Satan's peregrinations, with his local
habitation and abode at Japan.
Lord Tennyson's grandfather made a bad shot at
coming events when he gave the future laureate the half-
sovereign, saying, " That is the first money you have
ever earned by poetry, and, take my word for it, it will
be the last." But old Ben Evans, the "father" of St.
John's vestry, made quite as bad a one when he per-
dicted that the young curate, who could not carve a

72 The Church-Goer.
fowl, would never be a bishop. I have no doubt many
a time he of Ely afterwards thought of and laughed at
the " inverted prophecy," which the girl conveyed to
him from the jolly old vestryman in the pleasant Kings-
down dining-room.

(Tfje cTburcIjcs of ^estmi-sitpi--|ftare.
IF you're going up to Trinity Church, you may save
yourself the walk. We've been there, and could
not get farther than the porch ; and there it is as hot as
a forcing-house." This speech was addressed to me by a Bristolian, who,
with a member of his family, was coming down the hill
as I was going up it, some Sunday evenings ago. My
friend, when at home, is a churchwarden of St.  's,
and, as such, used to having every attention paid him the
moment he enters the sacred precincts, where his official
authority is acknowledged. It was, therefore, very hard
for human dignity, accustomed to prompt deference when
in his own parish — accustomed to having the sextoness
precede him up the aisle, and open the largest, best-
cushioned, and most prominent pew in the church for
him, — it was very hard, I say, for such a man to be left
standing in the doorway, unnoticed amongst a crowd of
expectants. I saw that not only his sense of personal
convenience, but of official importance, was hurt. I was
not surprised, nor would you be, good reader, if you ever
knew what it was to be a churchwarden, to sit in a high
seat between two blue and gdded wands, to read out of a
large folio Prayer-book with rich broad ribbon book
markers ; to be, in fact, the first of the congregation, and
the very next person to the parson. I felt for my friend,
and hoped he'd be more fortunate at the old parish
church to which he was then on his way, " to see if there
were any better chance of getting a place."
Nevertheless I determined, as I had got so far up the
hill, to go on and try for myself. It was so long since
I had been a churchwarden, I had had time to recover
my humility — to drop down to the life and level of an
73

74 The Church-Goer.
ordinary mortal again ; and I hoped, by the exercise of a
little more patience than could be expected from a
parochial dignitary fresh from his own place of worship
at Bristol, tp get beyond the porch.
I was mistaken, however. When I got to the church,
two sextons or assistant sextons were forcing their way
with chairs through the crush at the door, in a state
of considerable excitement, like men whose resources
were tried to the uttermost by the occasion. I followed
them, with the view of making my way, as you do by
following a wagon through a crowd, but I failed, and
like my friend, the churchwarden, stuck fast in the porch.
I had no official pride to be wounded, so I said to myself,
" I'll bide my time " ; and upon a useful principle which
I laid down for my guidance early in life — namely
to improve every occasion, however involuntary, or
opportunity, however brief — I turned to the notice
boards and papers in the porch, to see if I could inform
my mind by the perusal of what was there set up, since I
could not hear a single word of what was being read
within the church. A painted board, close to my
shoulder, intimated that all persons requiring sittings or
information on the subject of marriages or burials, were
to apply to Mr. Ashley, 1, Manilla Crescent. I required
a sitting, certainly, but only for the evening, and, however
well-disposed to accommodate me Mr. Ashley might be,
I could see from the packed state of the interior, of
which I got a glimpse between the heads of my nearest
neighbours in front, that even he must have been power
less in the present exigency; so I turned to a printed
paper, to find there, if possible, some practically useful
knowledge ; but it was not a whit more profitable read
ing. All persons who "felt themselves aggrieved" on
the subject of certain taxes — but whether assessed, in
come, or land taxes, I cannot now remember — were told
they were to betake themselves for redress to the Ship
Inn, Banwell, on a particular day. For my part, I never
felt otherwise, than " aggrieved " on the subject of taxes,
which have always been to me a most inconvenient insti
tution ; but I knew very well the Ship Inn, Banwell, was
not my place of appeal, so I took no further notice of the

The Churches of Weston-super-Mare. 75
matter, and was turning to the list of voters for the
electoral division of Congresbury, in lack of other
parish literature, when one of the sextons, pushing
through with another chair, forced me against the
marriage and burial-board, and I had hardly recovered
my perpendicular, when his colleague, similarly em
ployed, and doubtless with the best possible intentions
towards the standing members of the congregation inside,
almost pinned me with his piece of furniture to the tax-
paper. " I'm not a churchwarden," I said to myself, I confess
a trifle ruffled, " but my peace of mind will not be im
proved by my staying here, and being pushed about in
this way. I would not greatly care being elbowed by
a bishop, and even if Archdeacon Browne happened by
accident to stand on my toes, in consideration of his
apron and three-cornered hat I might try to forgive him;
but for grave-diggers and sextons to serve me in this
way  , wbde I have any charitable complacency and
consideration left, I bad better depart with it to the Old
Church, and see with my Bristolian friend if I may not
fare better there." Not that, in candour, I could blame any
one. The proverb says, " You cannot get more than a
quart into a quart bottle," and you can get no more into a
building than it wdl bold. I do not heed what was said
to me next day that Trinity is the fashionable church —
"the bonnet show," as it was called; for fashionable
people will, I presume, go to church as well as unfashion
able people, and will wear their bonnets, or those little
scraps of lace and flowers called by a popular error
bonnets, when they go there : and this, I expect, is the
only foundation for an assertion which is made of most
churches in well-frequented watering-places.
The Old, or Parish Church, to which I went direct
from Trinity, was almost as crowded as the latter, only
all were seated. It was doubtless the knowledge that he
could not show me into a pew without incommoding
others, that induced a sexton — but not the sexton — to
allow me to pass him as he stood enjoying the fresh air at
the outer entrance — without offering me any assistance
towards finding a place. It is very odd — and I wonder

76 The Church-Goer.
some moral philosopher does not apply himself to inves
tigating the cause — that sextons generally, as a class,
have a remarkable fancy for not being in the body of the
church, save as little as possible, during the prayers.
They flit out on every opportunity for a gossip with the
beadle or the chairmen, or somebody else. I suppose it is
because they look upon their vocation as work, or consider
this a part of their work. My friend of the Old Church
brought in a chair for himself when the sermon com
menced, but I was willing to think tbe civility was in
tended for me, only that just a moment before, a lady
came out of her pew, touched me gently on the shoulder,
and found a resting-place for me by her side. I was
thankful for the accommodation, for I had been standing
— I think, too, the only person standing — in the aisle up
to that moment.
I have got a remarkably staunch, downright, outspoken
Protestant friend, who says anything that comes into his
head, and who declares he is neither afraid nor ashamed
to say in " these semi- Popish days " he likes an ugly
church, " because," he remarks, " I know the ritualists
have not been there playing their pranks. Scoff as you
like at the old churchwardens' Gothic of fifty or a hun
dred years ago," he adds, warming to his subject, " when
I see it still remaining, I rejoice over it, and recognise it
as a proof of steadfast principles, and see in high pews
the evidence of an orthodox parish. Don't talk to me
of the architectural anomaly of a great dark mahogany
Grecian screen in an Early English church ; it makes my
heart glad to see it, though it should break the hearts of
half a dozen ecclesiological fops ; for it tells me the
parishioners have been so far able to stand by old Protes
tant ' barbarisms,' as your medioevalists call them, and I
prefer even half an inch thick of whitewash to scraped
pillars and popery ! "
Without undertaking to endorse the slashing candour
of my friend — especially now that Dissent itself is run
ning wild after art embellishment — I may say that
Weston Parish Church ought to delight him, for it is
ugly enough in all conscience after the manner he con
siders orthodox. Huge heavy galleries beetle over the

The Churches of Weston-super-Mare. 77
congregation, and cut the windows in two, while the pews
are so high, they seem growing up to meet the galleries ;
but then there are people to fill them all — to occupy every
square foot above and below ; while the most ingenious
processionist could do nothing in the chancel, seeing there
is not room to place another camp-stool there. In short,
yon must look for the beauty of a church like this in the
crowd of worshippers who fill it. If the growing pres
sure upon the ecclesiastical accommodation of the place
continues, they will perhaps have still further to postpone
art to urgency, and solder tin or screw cast iron churches
together, until deliberate steps have been taken to pro
vide more permanent and more picturesque buildings.

%-iiJI maxh.

BESIDES the usual advantages of the Sabbath, Sunday
has a peculiar rest for paterfamilias at Weston. He
has not to hurry off in the morning for the railway
station before he has half finished his breakfast : or,
having finished it, to find himself a prisoner until his
shoes are polished ; having, perhaps, no choice but to be
late, or rush out with one foot in shining and the other
in soiled leather. To lose his temper with the poor, hard-
pressed, hundred-handed, lodging-house maid-of-all-work
would be to betray a heart of adamant ; so he loses his
train instead.
On Sunday morning, however, he has none of these
troubles. As a punning friend of mine says, he is in
another train of thought, and has no thought about trains.
He need not be ringing for breakfast half an hour before
he gets it, and, having got it, he is not obliged to bolt it
as a parliamentary candidate does pledges. It is true, if
he means to obtain a seat in any of the town churches, he
must be there before the bell rings, and not (without a
season ticket) to find him accommodation even then ; but
this particular morning, I resolved to turn my back on
the Weston churches, to have a rural walk — as the same
jocose friend already quoted observed, to do a little Up
hill work ; though the road is pretty well as level as a
bowling-green all the way.
Uphill gets the overflowings, perhaps I should rather
say, the " failures '' of the Weston churches ; so that its
congregation far exceeds that of an ordinary little country
parish. Besides, it is the nearest approach to High
Church in the neighbourhood, and all those of Weston
being " strictly Evangelical," the visitors with soft hats
78

Up-Hill Work. 79
and straight collars, who like long coats and short ser
mons, having the prayers chanted, and the east the
cardinal point for the Creed, frequent it.
" Without being an extreme Ritualist," said a lady
friend of mine, " the first inquiry I make, after securing
comfortable lodgings at a watering-place, is if there be a
church where they use ' Hymns, Ancient and Modern,'
sing the closing ' Amen ' after each, and the clergyman
preaches in his surplice. I ask for no more ; I am mode
rate in my demands ; I want neither coloured vestments,
processional crosses, nor incense." And, dear good soul,
why should she not be gratified ? For my own part, I
can do without any of these. A black gown or white to
me is all the same ; and Tate and Brady are old friends of
mine. But Heaven forbid I should insist upon my fair
friend squaring her views to mine. I know her to be
(and she is but the type of thousands) the most kind and
conscientious of beings ; yet I also know she would be
very uncomfortable at a " Low Church," or, at least,
would not feel half as contented, or half as tranquil or
devotional, as at a High one — not very High, for that, she
says, would be pain and grief to her. When some one
asked Foote if he ever went to church, he replied, " No ;
but I see no harm in it." But there would be harm in it
if man or woman, high or low, went there to lose their
tempers, which, I suspect, would be the case if people
with severe views either way found themselves in a place
of worship where the service was conducted in a manner
widely differing from their adopted tastes. The church
I ordinarily attend is Evangelical, but when I notice a
strange clergyman of the St. Ethelburga type come in,
and by his " Ritualistic manner " (to coin an expression)
enter a mute but marked protest against what he consi
ders the improper way of conducting the services, I in
variably look to the columns of the next Church Times, and
there I am sure to find a letter as bitter as absynth against
the proceedings at  Church ; the horror of the writer
being perhaps chiefly excited by an announcement, which
he conceives ought to be made in a particular part of the
service, being made in another part. To you or me, per
haps, it does not appear a matter of any moment where

80 The Church-Goer.
it is made, provided it is made. But you cannot force
others to think with you ; and as I presume the object of
folks in going to church is to be profited — made happy
and tranquil — when there is a chance of their being dis
turbed in mind or losing their temper about anything,
then, be they High or Low, they had much better stay at
home. They have gone to tbe wrong place, if they can
not be in the right frame of mind.
Thus, I think, it is well there is a church like Uphill
close to Weston, for those who cannot feel in a comfort
able frame of mind at the latter. A glance round tbe
building told me at once I was surrounded by a majority
of the readers of at least the English Churchman. Some,
it is true, were there because they were more certain of
getting seats ; some because it was a pleasant walk, and
would be pleasanter if the Board of Health would look to
it; and one because (he told me so) his hat was of too
picturesque and remarkable a fashion for the precisionists
of a Weston church, and would only be tolerated by the
liberality of a country congregation. But the majority of
those present, apart from the parishioners, had gone out
there because it was more after their taste than the town
churches. Decorative colouring is introduced to warm up the
interior of Uphill New Church, which is in itself plain
enough. The local reader is aware that) there is an Old
Uphill Church also ; and the visitor cannot plead igno
rance of the fact, since he cannot turn his eyes in the
direction of Brean Down without seeing the more ancient
edifice, which is a prominent object in the landscape.
The site, in spite of the character of the personage to
whom, according to tradition, we are indebted for its se
lection, is very fine a.nd commanding. Every local guide
book doubtless communicates the information that no less
sinister a party than Satan himself made choice of the
spot where the old church stands. In this matter he was
at issue with the parishioners — upon whatever other points
they might have agreed ; for the latter selecting lower
ground and beginning to build there, their enemy carried
away the masonry during the night, and deposited it upon
the hill. The parishioners began again and again, and

Up-Hill Worle. 81
had their work for nothing, as each morning showed that
the diabolical workman had been bnsy during the dark
ness of the night ; since, let them construct ever so fast
in the hollow, up the hill much faster went the walls as
they rose. This, of course, was a ruinous competition for
the parish. Though the proverb speaks of there being
" the d  to pay," no adage encourages the hope that
the power in question may himself be made to pay ; so
the congregation, wisely perhaps, under the circumstances,
gave up the controversy and let the mysterious builder of
Uphill have his way as far as site was concerned. I
visited after service this same old church, abandoned
since a new one has been built, and (if the local tradition
is to be credited) I can easily understand the object of
the ill-omened architect in making the choice of ground
which he did, for it is a most arduous hill to climb, and
must have been a physical impediment to the attendance
of many an aged or weak parishioner. Judging from the
poisonous odours which arose from a small " phlegathonic
rill " which I had to pass before beginning the ascent,
and which the Westonians use as a public drain, I should
say the mephitic airs and evil savours of the original
builder still lingered round the spot, and that this awful
open sewer, if nothing else, was quite sufficient to give a
foundation for the strange legend.
When I got near the summit, notice-boards, threatening
the intruder with ruinous penalties and the portentous
terrors of the law, confronted me and warned me off from
trespassing on the churchyard ; but not perceiving what
injury I could possibly do to the dead or the living by
gratifying my wish to nave a nearer view of the old
edifice, I disregarded all minatory notices. To give the
designer, whosoever he was, his due, the Old is a more
characteristic building than the New ; there being an air
of strength and solidity, especially about the tower, very
suitable to a situation which seems to have been selected
in bold defiance of the winter storms of the Bristol
Channel, upon which, and upon the " ships [that] go on to
their haven under the hill," you look down. The chancel
of the Old Church has been repaired, and is, I believe,
used as a mortuary chapel ; but notice-boards forbid the
a

82 The Church-Goer.
curious or inquiring visitor to make a minute inspection.
This unaccountable suspicion of all strangers is carried
out in a queer practical manner ; the whole of the ancient
north porch being made to bristle with broken glass, so
that you would think the wine bottles of a century of
vestry dinners had been appropriated to, and smashed up
for, the purpose. Why all these deterring measures, you
cannot understand, as a burglarious entry by any save
body-snatchers could hardly be apprehended.
But I must retrace my steps down the hill once more
to the New Church. The officiating clergyman was not
the incumbent, but a gentleman who had taken tempo
rary duty for him during absence through ill-health. If
you look into the advertising columns of any of the cler
ical papers, you will see what a busy trade there is on
the Parson Exchange in the matter of summer months'
service. It is a time when the clerical world becomes
npmadic — wanders about — and people look out to pur
chase pleasant change in return for professional duty;
an agreeably situated vicarage, the use of a good garden,
and the produce of a milch-cow, being sometimes the
solp requital offered to the unattached for taking the
duties of a parish — for burying, marrying, and christen
ing, for a quarter of a year ; the key of the beer cellar
not even being left behind.
The officiating priest upon the present occasion had a
smart way with him. He was manifestly cultivating the
quick, ready, angular, colloquial style of Father Ignatius.
He gave force with a pair of eloquent white hands to a
pointed personal manner of appeal. He tried to be very
effective, and I will not say that he entirely succeeded or
entirely failed. You could see he felt that he had got
hold of a new art of pulpit elocution, and though I
thought he had not yet quite hit the mark, there was a
considerable effort at originality in what he did. He
clearly wanted to get away from the old, conventional,
sermonizing, sing-song delivery. He preached extempore
—that is, he only occasionally peeped round the cover of
his Bible at the notes he had inside it. His text was 
" Henceforth, let no man trouble me," and he had only
given out the words when I guessed at the probable use
he would make of them. Perhaps I should not be very

Up-Hill Work. 83
far wrong if I interpreted the drift of the discourse in
this way: St. Paul was troubled — troubled in his day
with Low Church cavillers — persons who rushed off to
the bishop or the newspapers with frivolous and vexatious
complaints at the sight of a mediasval book-marker, and
had something to say against the use of the surplice,
against choral service and close ritualism. They (Saint
Paul's successors) must expect the same. There have
been officious people, "aggrieved parishieners "¦ — only
half Churchmen, if so much — crossing conscientious
clergymen, and puffing up ultra-Protestant cheeks to
blow out altar-candles the moment they were lit in broad
daylight, threatening indignation meetings and profane
privy councils. But let such folks beware ; the mys
terious marks of the apostle — or the apostle's successors
— were not to be contemned. I do not for one moment
say these were the preacher's words : they are my own,
and I use them only as conveying some idea rather of the
spirit than the matter of the discourse.
Wlien I hear choral service in a country church to a
harmonium, I am willing to give the parson and parish
ioners credit for the pursuit of a meritorious object under
difficulties ; hut it has very rarely been my good fortune
to be able to conscientiously congratulate them on suc
cess. " Reader," says Carlyle, " reader, art thou one of
the thousand able still to read a psalm of David, and
catch some echo of it through the old dim centuries ;
feeling far off in thy own heart what it once was to other
hearts made as thine ? To sing it, attempt not ; for it is
impossible in this late time ; only know that it once was
sung." The sage of Chelsea asks too much of us ; but
we think it quite possible, by simply reading a psalm,
to catch more truly the echo from old dim centuries than
by listening for it in the elaborate attempts of many a
rustic choir.
Next to Uphill Church is an ivy-covered little chapel,
to what denomination belonging I cannot say, unless it be
the "Eclectics," seeing that its minister, like a broad-
minded man, turns the key in the conventicle door when
the church is open, and walks in to join in tbe Anglican
service close by ; and this without ever asking the parson
to return the compliment.

§«rnljant Cjraxcjj,
"AS sure as God is in Gloucestershire " — a common
J\_ exclamation at one time in England, and still oc
casionally beard — the Rev. H. Rogers, in his work on
the Kalendaries, tells us arose from the fact of there being
so many and fine churches in that county.
Upon this principle, however, I think Somersetshire
ought to have had tbe benefit of the saying, for it greatly
surpasses its neighbour in the number and comeliness of
its ecclesiastical structures. It is in this respect the
Normandy of England. Its beautiful old towered fanes
are everywhere to be met with — they are to be seen in
every point of the landscape, " bosomed high 'mid tufted
trees," or else standing out gracefully defined against the
sky. They differ in size and elaborateness, but they are
nearly in every instance — even when small and plain in
detail — symmetrical or picturesque in general effect, when
they have had the benefit of a lazy succession of church
wardens who have not taken to "improving" them.
When, however, these functionaries have been compelled,
by a strong sense of duty to call in the village mason and
joiner, they might have written on the face of their
handiwork, "Job Smith — his X mark," and Job Smith's
mark is unmistakable when he makes it.
Externally, at least, Burnham Parish Church may take
place with the fine old edifices of fair Somersetshire. It
stands pleasantly in a pretty churchyard, at the base of
a smooth green slope, which, until civilization and sea
bathing began there, was a sandhill. It has kept its
tuneful peal of bells and has not sold its leaden roof — a
parochial mode of raising the wind for repairs and restora
tions only too common of late years. As we read of
81

Burnham Church. 85
lovely young ladies in pecuniary straits selling the long
flowing hair which has been their best ornament, so we
frequently hear of town and country vestries, when they
do not care to " raise the devil " in the parish (as the
peacemakers say) by fighting a rate, and are hard pushed
to make up the necessary amount to repair the outside or
medisevalise the inside, immediately prepare to strip off,
roll up, and sell the lead roof (if they have one, and
previous churchwardens have not been before them in
bringing it to market and the melting-pot) and re-cover
ing the structure with slates, to apply the difference to
the proposed work. A lead roof to them is indeed ready
money, hard cash — like a treasure trove; like a crock of
gold found under the porch step — like a forest of old
timber to a spendthrift squire. Yet I look upon it that
for the squire to cut down and offer for auction to the
rustic wheelwright the avenue of ancestral oaks — under
which his forefathers passed to battle with spear and
shield, or rode forth to hunt with hawk and bow — in order
that he might bet upon the Derby, is not a more crying
shame than for parish calculators and economists to strip
the sacred edifice of the lead which has been so comely
and venerable a covering to it for centuries, and sell it
to the spelterer or colourman, merely to pay for painting,
and decorating, and carrying out architectural conceits
inside. It is as though the young lady already mentioned,
who sold her fine ebon tresses to the perruquier, applied
the proceeds to the purchase of a moire antique.
Really it is now almost as rare a thing to find an old
parish church keeping its original lead roof, as a genteel
hard-up old family keeping its old silver plate : and I
marvelled much how the ecclesiastical authorities of
Burnham contrived to do all the painting, and glazing,
and repairing, and pew joinery of the last century without
sending the plumbers np aloft with their chisels and
mallets to strip, and weigh, and sell the mineral covering,
until I went inside and, looking up, saw the ceiling of the
nave chequered with coats of arms. Not old emblazon
ments, dim antique shields dying out in fading colours
or draped with cobwebs, but brand new spick and span
heraldry shining in fresh or and argent, azure, gules, and

86 The Church-Goer.
vert, with brilliant bars, and all the rampant lions, and
gazing stags, and grotesque griffins of the Heralds' Col
lege bright and clear, as though they had been just
created under the brush of the colourman. Ho ! ho ! (I
said) my good people of Burnham, so you, too, have found
out the secret for raising money discovered by my earnest
little friend E  e, erst of B  n. He, I look upon it,
was the first that learnt to play upon the heraldic bag
pipes to human weakness for hereditary honours, in such
a manner as to make the parishioners dance to the jing
ling tune of " J'ai de V argent." While other parsons and
other people, too stupid to dream of the pride of heraldry
and high descent which beats in all our bosoms, were
begging for subscriptions or doing battle for church-rates
in order to raise the means of repairing or restoring their
churches, he went round, or wrote to his ambitious neigh
bours, found an ancestor for each of them in the historic
dead rolls of the parish, touched them upon the weak
point, set up their arms illuminated in the church windows
or embossed on the church panels, and got with alacrity
from them ten times the amount they would otherwise
have contributed to the work. Nay more, if he heard of
any rich individual who, having made his money by trade,
was anxious for ancestral distinction, his research rarely
failed to find him a mailed forefather amongst the Paladins
of the parish, and, with the judicious use of the Norman
prefix, identified Hodge, the retired burgher, with a De
Hogue of that ilk, who distinguished himself wonderfully
in the crusades, and took a lusty share in helping Cceur
de Lion to pommel down with his battle-axe the gates of
Ascalon. De Hodge, however, was not without his value
received, for he incontinently got himself with all his
pedigree, up to the aforesaid cross-legged crusader of
Ascalon, inserted in Burke's Landed Gentry and Com
moners of England, and quickly succeeded in persuading
himself that he had the blue aristocratic blood of half a
dozen soldiers of the cross in his veins.
It was night when I was in Burnham Church, and
my sight, which is but indifferent in broad day, could
not make out a single crest or read a single motto on
the armorial bearings which make the ceiling have in the

Burnham Church. 87
distance the appearance of a draught-board ; I have there
fore not the slightest idea whose arms they are. I think
it discreet to make this preliminary declaration, lest I
should inadvertently inflame any of the owners of the
ramping beasts and haughty scrolls thereon ; for I do not
wish to stir the knightly blood, or run the risk of being
called out by all the shield-bearers on the ceiling. I
only commend the wisdom that thought of this ingenious
device; for unless every man paid £10 for having his
quarterings put there the vicar and churchwardens made
a miserable market of their heraldry. For my part, I
won't say — for there is no use my saying it, since there
is no room left for my coat — what I would not give to
have my armorial bearings ranged amongst the rest.
Being like Sydney Smith's ancestor, who sealed his letters
with his thumb, and being also for the greater part of my
life more occupied in finding a coat for my back than
one for my shield, I am in total ignorance as to what the
elaborations of my escutcheon may be. But I have no
doubt that for a proper consideration Garter King would
allow me to take my choice of all the crusaders ; in which
case I should select for my cognisance some creature
equally ferocious and showy, and sending a sketch of it,
with a ten pound note, to the senior churchwarden of
Burnham, beg him to transfer one to the ceiling and the
other to my credit. And talk as Radicals and utilitarians
may, depend upon it, there is a virtue in heraldry, if for
nothing else, that it has helped to keep the leaden roof
on Burnham Church, and enabled many a person, like
my energetic friend E  , to find the means of repara
tion and restoration amongst the dust of the mighty dead,
instead of making a row and a rate for it amongst the
malignant living. You may rest assured we all like
ancestors, and the first thing many a man does, after
getting into easy circumstances, is to buy a few progeni
tors of different periods at picture auctions. " It is all
nonsense," your smart, keen Radical may say, " even
when the thing is real. An ancestry is like a potato, the
best part of it underground." Nevertheless, if your smart
Radical makes a fortune, the first thing he does is to
start in search of forefathers, and he'll order them from

88 The Church-Goer.
the Heralds' College, and have them whatever tbey cost
him. Or if he goes to some ancient country church on
Sunday, and sees the old squire or baronet landlord of
the parish in the old family pew, near tbe old family
tombs in the chancel with the old recumbent figures upon
them, the smart Radical, though he can make a speech
that would flabbergast the dull and pompous descendant
of all these recumbent figures in ten minutes, nevertheless
feels internally, though he won't admit it, that there is
something in following all these high stomachered dames
and all these mailed knights of Caen stone or alabaster,
on the same family road — something in ancestry, even
though it be "like potatoes," that will extort his secret
deference, however reluctant he may be to concede it. A
grander idea, perhaps, than monuments and altar tombs
was that of the Herrenhutters or Moravian Brethren,
who made their graves level and undistinguishable from
the surrounding earth, not leaving even a green mound
to mark their resting-places ; but if we were all Herren
hutters, what would the statuaries and stone-cutters and
heraldic painters do. I confess, however, that it has
sometimes struck me whether it be quite consistent in us
to allow proud marble trophies and gilded banners to be
set up in our fine old churches, where blessings are weekly
pronounced upon the humble and meek in spirit ; those
haughty memorials seeming like mute protests against
that solemn sentence which consigns ashes to ashes, dust
to dust.
And from the same service, by the way, in which this
sentence is found, was the text on the evening of my
visit to Burnham Church taken : " I know that my
Redeemer liveth." And with what echo from perhaps
many a grave-side does this grand passage come to us.
It is found in the Book of Job, but we all somehow only
identify it with the beautiful burial service of the Church.
Some, perhaps, last heard it in the country churchyard,
with the signs of happy rural life outside the precincts
of God's acre. Some, perhaps, last heard it in the town
burial-ground surrounded by tall houses, from the
windows of which people looked down on the mourning
procession. Some, perhaps, last heard it in the Gothic

Burnham Church. 89
crypt of an old city church, by the tomb of the burgher
founder of the sacred fane. And I last heard it amidst
the crumbling walls of a ruined abbey, where the rank
hemlock grew tall, and the dark ivy, like a pall, hung
from broken plinth and porchway. To every ear the
passage is associated- with many memories, and I will say
the preacher of this evening did it every justice. He was
an elderly man with grey hair, but he delivered a dis
course of considerable eloquence, with great earnestness.
I do not know who he was, and as I never heard or read
the sermon before, I presume it was his own ; and indeed,
from the manner in which he made it his own by action,
utterance, and expression, I should not feel justified for
one moment in doubting its originality.
It is a roomy church is that of Burnham, well lit and
warm ; and one particularly hugged oneself in the light
and warmth on a " naughty night " like this when it was
blackness and darkness without, and wind and rain flung
themselves against roof and windows, with the hoarse
waves for a back-ground of sound. But the fine organ
pealed through the storm, and the voices of the congrega
tion generally joining heartily in the singing, it was only
between the cadences of chant and hymn that the gusty
elements without could get a moment's hearing.* We
had two hymn-books, " The Parochial Hymn-book " and
" The Congregational Hymn-book," and we had selections
from both ; so that the difficulty which people before
experienced from there being different hymnals in different
* The musical part of the services in the churches in this neigh
bourhood have recently been much improved. At Berrow, which I
visited a short time ago, the harmonium, which I noticed, is of late
introduction. Before that the usual rustic orchestra, bassoon
(popularly known as "horse's leg "), base viol, and clarionet were in
force, and the chief singer was an old fellow, a warrener, who was
so proud of his performances that he was always boasting " he'd
pitch a stave, old measure, with any man in the country." With
the arrival of the harmonium, however, the gallery was cleared of
the old corps, and with them the warrener, who was so indignant at
his treatment and with the new schoolmaster who now led the
choir, that he absented himself from church, and vehemently de
clared, with reference to the schoolmaster, that " in spite of all his
new fangled science, he'd sing a stave against him any day for a
quart — Old Measure."

90 The Church-Goer.
churches promises, when we find two kinds in one church,
to be by-and-by doubled. I cannot deny that it may be
in a spirit of peace and compromise the ecclesiastioal
authorities of Burnham have provided one for each party
in the church ; for I fancied " The Parochial " was in
somewhat of the old Evangelical tone, while " The Con
gregational " might have smacked of a more elevated
Anglicanism. I do not know why I should say so, save
that each hymn in the latter concluded with an " amen " ;
and I do not know why an "amen," any more than a
cross, should be made over by good Protestants to those
they consider by no means so orthodox or sound as them
selves ; but I believe it really is so, that this amen, Hke
the soft bowler hats which the High Church parsons have
taken to, has now come to have a party signification, like
the facing eastward at the Creed. Staunch an anti-Papist,
however, as I am, I think both very innocent. With
regard to the bowler hats, they are so light and comfort
able that it is something like small martyrdom in Low
Church clergy to abjure their use, and stick to the
chimneypots upon the Protestant principle. One thing
I will say, that the bowler can hardly be said to be
characteristic of the Tractarian, who is unbending — stick
ing up, even to the stake (if people would accommodate
him with such an implement of torture), for what many
like myself in our benighted ignorance think trifles. The
bowler is yielding, soft, pliable — may be squeezed by the
hands of expediency into the smallest compass or the
shallowest pocket — may be sat upon, stood upon, and
come out of all its trials not a whit the worse for them ;
while the more Protestant chimney-pot, from its almost
Calvinistic rigour, never comes well out of a scrape.
When you get with it into a crowd, unless you, keep it
on your head, it is sure to be hopelessly squeezed, dis
torted, and crushed, having no rebound about it— incapable
of bearing external pressure. If we were to judge by
hats alone, I should say the Anglican bowler was the
best adapted for the pliant times in which we live, this
mutually-conceding non-martyrdom nineteenth century
of ours.

%, plural |libe.
ON Sunday morning, I sat, after an early breakfast,
at the open window of my Weston lodgings, mutter
ing George Herbert's lines, —
" Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,
The bridal of the earth and sky,
The dews may weep thy fall to-night,
For thou must die," —
looking d.reamily out on that broad domain of mud which
Father Neptune washes twice a day, and speculating as
to which of the churches I should go to, with the least
probabdity of being left half an hour in the porch until
the sexton gave me a patronising nod to follow him. I
do not grumble at this, for universal as is the use of gutta
percha, I have not yet heard of any architect sufficiently
ingenious to apply it as a material to places of worship ;
and unless a budding were elastic, it could not be stretched
to the dimensions necessary to meet the summer demand
upon its space, caused by the incursion of visitors to a
"watering town on the Bristol Channel. In Weston, I will
do thepew-openeis the justice to say, they spare no efforts
to pack away all comers, and one of these civil function
aries is so famous for the talent he displays in this respect,
it is reported of him that, sooner than not accommodate all
applicants, be once put a lady in the lap of each of the
elderly churchwardens, and, further acting upon a happy
thought suggested by the vision of Jacob's ladder in the
first lesson, found places for a large family on the pulpit
stairs. I never myself entirely credited the story, but
accepted it as a pleasant though hyperbolical illustration
of the man's desire to do the best under difficulties.
When I had thought over the point, and concluded I
91

92 The Church-Goer.
had no alternative but "the Cathedral of Immensity,"
or a snatch of a sermon with the chance of a seat at
"secondly" or " thirdly," when tbe oppressive heat or a
few fainting ladies had made vacancies for more robust
constitutions, a note was brought me from a friend, saying
that he was going to St. Anne's juxta Banwell, and would
call for me at ^narter to ten. I lost not a moment in
answering in the affirmative ; for, to say nothing of a
pleasant drive through a pleasant country, with a pleasant
companion, who was the fellow-pilgrim of the old Church
goer in many a rural ride,* I was secretly actuated, I fear,
by something like carnal pride.
My friend was the munificent builder of the pretty
church in question; and I said to myself, As soon as they
hear he is coming, the choir will turn out with timbrels
and trumpets, with sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all
kinds of music, to meet him at the gate, and I'll fall in
for a little of the honour I am not rich enough to purchase
for myself. And besides, should my Mexican bonds ever
turn out prizes, and I be disposed to do a little in practical
ecclesiology out of the profits, I will be able to get a hint
on the subject from what I see to-day. If I become a
patron, I thought to myself, I should not like to be
preached at from the pulpit by my own " appointment,"
— as was the case not long ago in a parish not many miles
off —or to be served as old John Hare was at Zion Chapel,
by Bedminster Bridge, where the deacons denied him a
seat in his own building ; and though he persisted for a
while in attending, he was at length compelled to retire,
after finding he furnished the preacher, on three several
Sundays, with a " fit " illustration, and the congregation
with a harrowing example, of the least amiable of the two
characters in the parable of Dives and Lazarus.
No reader who has ridden by the Bristol and Exeter
railway, can have failed to notice the new and pretty
little Gothic church of St. Anne's, which stands a stone's
throw off the line on your left, as you travel by the down-
train and about a mile from the Banwell station. It is,
however, better known to the public by the name of the
* The late Mr. Bobert Phippen.

A Rural Bide. 93
founder than that of the patron saint, and passengers as
they flit hj, suddenly point from their carriages, and say,
" Look there ; that's P  -'s church." Norton found the
design, and my friend the money, and some good people
the twelve apostles in painted glass for the chancel, and
the four great prophets for the west window — the work
of those admirable artists, the O'Connor Brothers. I
had visited the church on the day of opening, and beard
excellent Bath and Wells — who looked like a fresh old
farmer in lawn sleeves — commend from the pulpit, in
terms we all endorsed, the kindness and liberality of the
founder ; but Saint Anne's was then in festive attire, and
I wished to see her in her ordinary day dress.
The bell was ringing as we alighted at the churchyard
gate, and some of the rustic congregation were entering ;
but no timbrels, trumpet, sackbut, psaltery, or any kind
of music came to meet us : no churchwardens presented
themselves with blue wands to form an escort to the south
entrance. While I was secretly repining at the absence
of all eclat, and mentally resolving to stipulate for a little
more personal pomp and circumstance when I built my
church, the founder was walking with the rustic folks as
unconcernedly as though he had no greater share in the
work than carrying a hod for eighteen-pence a day to
those who raised it, when his steps were arrested by some
young evergreens which he had planted, and which the
parson's or somebody else's sheep, which seemed no way
ashamed of themselves, bad eaten almost bare to the roots.
I have known my friend a great many 'years, and
have never yet seen him out of temper, though his equa
nimity has, upon some occasions, been pretty well tried.
As, for instance, when the carved reredos of Bedminster
New Church raised a Protestant storm about bis ears,
and folks prophesied he'd " go over.'' He, however, only
smiled at their prophecies, and said they'd acknowledge
in the long run he was " as fond of the roast beef and
Reformation of Old England as any of them." Then,
when the tower of this same St. Anne's fell, and he was
told the foundation for another could hardly be depended
upon, he simply said, "Then clear away the materials, and
let us have a bell-turret in the angle of the north tran-

94 The Church-Goer.
sept"; and they had a bell-turret, and a very pretty one
it is. Nor can I say he was vexed now ; but he certainly
did look a little grieved. You may build ever so handsome
a church, but it is bound to look bare and cold to a certain
extent until the shrubs and young trees you have planted
spring up to lend softness to the scene. Tbe value of the
herbage for a few sheep is therefore nothing compared
with the damage they do in this respect. The founder
pensively turned over the nibbled and be-browsed stumps
with the point of his umbrella, and though he only wished
the mutton might not eat any the tenderer for feeding off
the evergreens in consecrated ground, I said to myself,
" These confounded wethers have spoiled his devotions
for the day, and he will not get the ruined lauristinus out
of his mind before the Litany." I was wrong, however,
for he joined the little choir, chiefly ladies, so heartily in
chanting the Te Deum, that I was convinced he soon for
got the evergreens and forgave the sheep.
Any person with " a will and a way," who meditates
building a little country church to comfortably accommo
date some three hundred persons (parsonage and school
house to follow), would do well to pay a visit to St.
Anne's. A good congregation was all that was wanted. I heard
something about the superior attractions of a popular
curate who had come to the mother church of Congres-
bury, in a corner of which parish St. Anne's is budt, the
inhabitants of a considerable area being previously with
out church accommodation nearer than two, and three,
and four miles; but in some country churches the evening
service is best attended, which I believe is the case at
St. Anne's.
If the absentees, instead of mooning about barton and
milking close, had been at service, they would have heard
an interesting sermon on Ahab and Naboth the Jezreelite ;
though a queer thought struck me as to whether or not
the preacher, whose discourse was extempore, had noticed
the presence of the founder, and adroitly improved the
occasion to hint the desirability of a capacious " garden
of herbs " as a comfortable addition to the contemplated
parsonage. I call the sermon interesting, though I can-

A Rural Ride. 95
not help recalling to mind the characteristic remark of
an old farmer many years ago, who, after hearing the
same subject treated in much the same way, observed that
though Ahab was an "uncommon bad man," he must own
Naboth was a " bit unneighbourly like " in obstinately re
fusing to let the King of Samaria have his vineyard for
a full equivalent. Your agriculturist has such decided
opinions as to the advantage of a ring fence, that he would
certainly be on the side of Artiab, had the king tried only
fair and legitimate means to keep his holding compactly
together. By a larger congregation, or in a larger church, the
discourse could hardly have been heard in all parts of the
building, and I believe there is a notion amongst the
parishioners that the parson " sings away " so much of
his voice in the musical services, in which he effectively
takes a part, that he has not much left for the sermon.
Certainly a clergyman who does the whole of the work
in this way must have strong lungs not to feel the stress
before he has finished ; especially as refreshments in the
middle are no longer permissible, after the manner adopted
by the historian of Bristol, the Rev. Samuel Seyer, who,
when curate of Horfield, some half-century or more ago,
had regularly handed to him in the pulpit by an old lady
a couple of lumps of sugar steeped in cognac, just before
giving out the text. Another plan for vocal recovery was
that tried by the Rev. Dr. Ash, of Bristol, who, when he
perceived his breath fading in the middle of his discourse,
would coolly stop, call on the choir " for a stave," and,
having rested wlnle it was being sung, resume his dis
course, like a giant — or a Doctor of Divinity — refreshed.
While I stood with the founder in the church looking
about me, the incumbent, having quickly doffed his gown,
flitted by us. I knew an old country rector who used to
say, in quiet protest against all gossiping delays at the
porch after morning service, —
" When a goose is in the case
Everything else must give place ; "
but as I did not think the exigencies of the Sunday joint
could be so very pressing as to prevent even the shortest

96 The Church-Goer.
greeting from the incumbent to the founder, I excused
haste, under the belief that the former was in a hurry
to dismiss (without a blessing) that portion of his flock
which was feeding on my friend's well-won laurels in the
churchyard.

Q kittle Somersetshire Cljurdr.
REGARDED merely as an archaeological curiosity — as a
specimen of a little rural parish church still left in the
middle of the nineteenth century, in spite of the march of
ecclesiology and the race of restorers — I should like to put
a gigantic melon glass over the tiny nave, chancel, and
stunted tower of Brean in all its rusticity, and preserve it
in its present state for posterity ; of course taking care not
to enclose its clergyman and congregation, though they, too,
possessed an interest almost too tempting to allow them
to escape. Ii it were in the mountains of Wales, or a re
mote corner of the kingdom of Connaught, one perhaps
might not be surprised to alight upon such a sacred edifice ;
but Brean, as we all know, is no distant wilderness. Climb
the headland that is above it, and you will see the towers
and villas of ambitious Weston. Brent Knoll, around
which Denison reigns a parochial hierarch, is not a rifle
shot from it. Modern Uphill is at hand; while Lympsham
with its great elms, and for which all that paint brushes
and chisels could do has been done, is the adjoining parish
church. So that you perceive it is not so utterly out of
the world, though its actual situation is somewhat lonely.
It is bounded on the north by Brean Down, which thrusts
itself out into the sea as if to meet the Steep Holmes ; on
the south by a snug parsonage-house ; on the east by a fat
dairy farm ; on the west by a natural barrier of sand-hills,
over which the wind murmurs and outside which the sea
moans. The church is so small that it is dwarfed by the
vicar's residence ; and the tower, which is cut short by a
slanting slate roof, is like a dove-cot. So that it was with
difficulty, and, indeed, not without the assistance of a
97 H

98 The Church-Goer.
woman I met on the road, that I could discern the build
ing ; though three tinkling bells sent their not unpleasing
sounds over the butter-cupped meadows and the broad
ditches that drain into the Axe.
Being in tbe neighbourhood for a day or two, I at first
resolved to walk over to East Brent, to see the Prince
Rupert of the Pulpit in his own parish, and note how his
super-chivalric theology told upon the "hempen home
spuns" and shining-faced cheesemakers under his charge.
But I learned that the Venerable George Anthony was
from home. Impatient like the war-horse in Job of smell
ing the battle afar off, he had gone to London to be in the
midst of controversy and superintend the issue of the first
number of the Church and State Beview, of which he is the
editor ; but I believe he was more careful to make provision
for his absence than the Rev. W. Elwin, who, when he
conducted the Quarterly, regularly shut up his church the
Sunday before the publication of that well-known Tory
organ, to make a last revision of the proof-sheets ; and his
parishioners, who knew the practice, inserted in their
calendars a new festival, which they called "Quarterly
Sunday." The archdeacon's curate, who has nothing to
do with the Church and State Beview, remained behind to
attend to the souls of the parishioners, while his vicar
looked after the printers' devils. As, however, to see
East Brent without the archdeacon would be to witness
"Hamlet" with the Prince of Denmark's part left out, I
resolved to go elsewhere for service, and selected Brean.
On one of the half-dozen houses of which (I can hardly
call it village) Brean consists, I read the words, " Wesleyan
Chapel " — a not very ecclesiastical structure, being one of
three in a brick row, and most domestic in its architecture.
Hearing voices, 1 looked in. Eight or nine children were
repeating together the Lord's Prayer to a man astride one
of the forms in front of the pulpit, and who was probably
the Sunday-school teacher.
On the other side of the way stood the church — little
and old, and unpicturesquely freshened up with white
wash and yellow ochre ; the former on the walls and the
latter on the worn stone mullions of the small Gothic
windows. The stunted slate-topped tower was white-

A Little Somersetshire Church. 99
limed, too, — all but a little slate slab on the western
side, which bore the inscription —

John Ghenkin,
Churchwarden, 1729.

Anything owing less to taste and trouble than the little
structure yon could not imagine. Though rude, however,
and old, and kept together as it were by repeated white
washings, which mercifully filled up flaws and cracks, it
was not disproportioned or unvenerable in aspect, and
might with a trifling outlay be made to look as though
some one cared for it.* As I sat down on one of the
"free" back seats intended for the agricultural labourers
and their children, the rotten board almost broke under
my weight, though I am by no means ponderous. A
farmer entering soon after invited me into one of the four
or five pews that occupy the nave on either side, and
which looked rough and unfinished enough to have been
wrought out of pieces of wrecked timber ; but I preferred
remaining where I was, for it seemed to me as if rheuma
tism lurked in every joint and cranny of those lnmbering
wooden enclosures, which probably were not regularly
aired even once a week.
Exclusive of the parson and clerk, not counting myself
and friend, the congregation numbered two-and-twenty,
which was exactly the length of the sermon taken in
minutes, or sixty seconds for every soul. Two farm
labourers and two little boys were in the free seats ; and
remembering the eight children I saw in Ebenezer oppo
site on my way to church, I began to think that, so far
as the rising generation went, iWesley's representative,
who sat with his legs across the form in front of the
pulpit there, had the best of the battle, and beat the
parson four to one.
The service, sermon included, lasted an hour and seven
teen minutes. We had no singing — no music of any kind;
* I believe this has since been done.

100 The Church-Goer.
and this want gave so literally monotonous an effect to the
service, I should have wished, if it were only to break the
sameness of sound— to vary it a little— to have gone into
the porch and rung the three bells, since there were no
other musical instruments at hand.
Nobody, it is clear, has been to Brean to tell the two-and-
twenty worshippers that to preach in a white surplice is
the sign of the scarlet lady ; for the vicar or rector (I am
in ignorance which he is) marched up the pulpit stairs
from the communion without changing his raiment, and
none left their pews in Protestant rage. Nor was this the
only indication of High Anglicanism ; for he gave out the
text at once, without prefatory collect of any kind. Yet
I should wonder if he were of the same school as the
Oxford Professor of Hebrew; for, whatever a High Church
man will do or won't do, put him in a dilapidated dingy
old church, and he'll never rest until he has made it
something more than merely four bare walls. He may
leave the rooms of the parsonage unpapered, the floors
uncarpeted, but he'll lay down encaustic tiles in the
chancel, and place carved poppy-headed seats in the
nave ; he'll have a painted east window and as much
coloured glass in the side-lights as they will carry. He
may go further, and frighten the parish by picking out a
useless piscina near the altar ; but then, if he leaves his
wife without a pianoforte, he'll have at least a harmonium
for her to play in church, and lead the singing. He'd
never be happy, too, while our cross-legged friend who
represented John Wesley on the other side of the road,
had possession of the juvenile population. He'd seize upon
those six lads in Ebenezer yonder, wash their faces, and
comb their hair, put them into square caps and linen
surplices, and keep them sol-fa-ing in the parsonage every
night, until he had fitted them for a parochial choir. He
might do perhaps some other things in his " zeal, " not so
defensible or discreet, and which I should be loth to en
dorse by anticipation ; but all this, if he were of the High
Anglican type he would do, depend upon it. For their
churches and their choirs you hardly know what sacrifices
young clergymen of this long-coated, high-collared school
will not do. They'll forget the parsonage for the

A Little Somersetshire Church. 101
church; strip the walls of the former to decorate the
latter; make the dinner-table pay tribute to it ; rifle the
plate-chest, and hardly hesitate to spoil even the nursery
for it.
Some time ago I paid a young clerical friend a visit.
He had been only three or four years in possession of
what was originally as poor and bare a little church as
that of Brean, yet it was, when I visited him, quite a
beautiful picture — interior, churchyard, and all. He had
begged for a painted east window, and determined from
his own rather scanty means to have two side ones en suite,
and succeeded, but not without pinching himself and
family sorely for the means. When showing me over the
church his wife called one of these windows, that on the
south side, " Baby's window. "
"Why Baby's window?" I asked, thinking perhaps it
was a memorial one.
"My wife," said her husband, "calls it Baby's window, but
I call it the pap-dish window. The truth is, " he continued,
" we parted with everything superfluous to raise the money
for these two windows, and still we were short, though I
gave up my intended new coat, and Caroline there sunk
her silk dress. The silver tea-pot was melted, a choice set
of Greek classics and four treasured Elzevirs were disposed
of in our distress. Still money was wanted for the south
window ; when overhauling our household we saw nothing
for it but to lay sacrilegious hands on a large silver pap-
dish, which her godmother had given baby. This made
up the deficiency, and the south window was finished.
Ever since we call it, between ourselves, indifferently
Baby's window and the Pap-dish window. "
Was not that heroic ? And the two people told it laugh
ing, and seemed to see nothing like self-sacrifice in it. I
remember reading in the life of the good Kyrle, " the Man
of Ross," of his going to Gloucester, where a peal of bells
were being cast at his expense for the parish church, and
of his throwing his sdver tankard, when at the foundry,
into the metal while molten hot. But this, for a comfort
able old bachelor, was not half so noble an offering as a
baby's pap-boat ; but the mother only laughed, and said
Popsy throve as well out of delf.

102 The Church-Goer.
This will explain to you why I think the incumbent of
Brean, in spite of surplice at sermon time and no collect,
is not of the " High Anglican " school, the same as Popsy's
parents.

% Smntrsefsjfir* " Si. |lcjqite's."
TyUX jixmina facti — A lady did it all. To Miss Poole
that was, Mrs. Luttrell that is, we owe tbe exceed
ingly pretty church, whose bright red and black-tiled
spire " with silent finger points to heaven " from amongst
laden orchards and train- signals, near the Highbridge
Station. Picturesque without, ornate within, when a
hundred years have passed over it and softened the glare
of its covering, it will deservedly take rank with the
beautiful old churches of Somersetshire. We are fond of
talking of the pious munificence of the past, but there are
many sacred edifices now being raised, or recently raised,
throughout the country by private liberality, that, in a few
generations more, will be referred to as what individuals
did or could do in this nineteenth century, which we call
malapert and puffed-up now, but which perhaps, by-and-
by, will come to be considered almost mediaeval, even
perhaps feudal in character, if it were only in contrast
with the surpassing conceit and restless activity of the
times awaiting us.
I do not know to what saint the eminently handsome
Early English fane at Highbridge is dedicated, but it is
a little St. Roque's [see Mrs. Oliphant's " Chronicles of
Carlingford "] in its way, having all the visible signs of
what has not been so infelicitously called " intense Angli
canism." Its altar farniture, with symbolically em
broidered coverings and tall candlesticks ; its little staff
of four boy- choristers ; its shining white marble pulpit,
inlaid with brass, and agate and other coloured stones set
into sacred emblems — all these at once indicate its High
character. The arcadings of the chancel windows are
supported on polished marble columns, as are also the
ios

104 The Church-Goer.
arches which separate the north aisle from the nave. So
that, with the Camdenian parsonage and Gothic schools
adjoining, it forms quite a little mediaeval settlement,
close to that modern innovation, a great railway line,
with the rushing wind of the express train and the
piercing shriek of the steam whistle penetrating to the
sanctuary. I am not one — like a shy horse starting at a strange
object — to be frightened at a white surplice or a purple
altar cloth ; and the gift of finely carved marble and
richly wrought velvet to the House of Prayer cannot be
considered other than a gracious offering ; so I have not
a word to say of either, save in commendation of the
munificence which raised the beautiful little Highbridge
Church. Only I wish the clergyman would say the
prayers in his natural, manly voice. For I cannot help
thinking in this microscopic imitation of a cathedral service
in a little country church where there are not the means
of carrying it out, and where, if there were the means, it
would perhaps be out of place — the simple dignity of the
Church service suffers. There is a manifest effort to do
something, accompanied with a feeling of apprehension
lest the effort should break down ; so that you experience
the uneasy if not painful sensation of witnessing a per
formance which may be a failure, and never produces
under such circumstances an effect proportioned to the
preparation. When the fever fit of " going over " seized so many of
our clergymen some years ago, a Bristol incumbent, who
was amongst the seceders, while sickening for the change
adopted many novelties in his church, which frightened
away the congregation one after the other. At last he
took to intoning, when one attendant who had stood by
him to this penultimate step sent for his cushion and
hassocks, and beat a retreat to a more Protestant place
of worship. The poor religiously moribund vicar felt this
falling off most of all, and desired the churchwarden to
ascertain the deserter's cause for deserting. "It's that
intoning," frankly answered the person addressed. " But
it is done in cathedrals," pleaded the apologetic church
warden. " Oh, it is done there in tune ; but our parson

A Somersetshire " St. Roque's." 105
lost his key-note repeatedly, and was only by accident in
tune," was the answer of the retiring member. On the
going, going, but then not yet gone clergyman hearing
this, he desisted from intoning. His musical sensibility
was mortally wounded. He rather gloried in his Pro
testantism beingimpugned. He'd go to the stake willingly
for any of his new " fancy forms " ; but he could not stand
his gamut being called in question ; he broke down under
the aspersion, and fled for consolation into the bosom of
Rome. I do not mean to say or insinuate that there were any
remarkable tonic inaccuracies at Highbridge, only for
one I should have preferred the prayers said, and so pro
bably would have the majority of the parishioners ; for,
though there was a very fair and respectable attendance,
the peasant element seemed to be missing from the church.
But whether their absence was attributable to apathy, or
indolence, or want oE sympathy with the manner of con
ducting the service, or a preference for the dissenting
chapel, where they could themselves lustily sing Doctors
Watts or Doddridge instead of listening to the cadences
of a single voice, I cannot say.
Of course it may be concluded that, as people have a
right to do what they like with their own, the munificent
lady who built and endowed the beautiful little church
was entitled to gratify her own views as to the mode of
conducting the services in it. Evangelical church builders
do the same when they build and endow, and perhaps tbe
public in the long run benefit by the rivalry ; while each
party, by showing an indulgent consideration for the
feelings and motives of the other, may conduce to the
general sentiment of charity which is the essence of true
religion, and the ignoring of which in so many cases
between professing Christians may have led in some degree
to the uprising of another party in audacious revolt against
the principles held in reverence by both. There is a polem
ical bitterness which even orthodoxy cannot sanctify, and
when some people of Geneva cried out, in impatience of
their great Reformer's peevish intolerance and temper,
that " they would rather go to hell with Beza than to
heaven with Calvin," they showed how much advantage a

106 The Church-Goer.
kind spirit in those who maintain it may give to any
cause in a great controversy.
" The harvest is the end of the world, and the reapers
are the angels." The text and the time of the year at
once foretold the nature of the discourse. As I en
tered the church and the bells were still ringing, the
group at the porch were gossiping about the ingathering.
You could hear that So-and-so had carried all bis wheat,
or that somebody else had not yet quite finished. It is
the natural chat of country folks when they meet on
Sundays, and stand outside the open church door in the
sound of the pleasant chimes, amidst the grassy grave-
mounds; and I confess I should as little think of rebuking
them, as in a wet season summoning a man for saving his
hay or pulling his ox out of a ditch on Sunday. On this
sunny Sabbath morning, everything was redolent of
harvest. You looked out and saw the bartons filled with
new corn, and the still uncarried yellow shocks standing
in some fields : everything was suggestive of the ingather
ing of the good fruits of the earth, and a more impressive,
at the same time simple, sermon, I never heard. Its
simplicity, however, was that of a pleasant melody. Its
words touched you like a gentle air breathing in through
the open porch from the cornfields and pastures outside —
a grateful incense offered up for God's gift of a good
harvest in this world, and a solemn reminder of that great
harvest when the angels shall be the reapers, and we shall
be gathered with the wheat on the golden floor of the
New Jerusalem, or bound up with the bundles of tares
that shall be rejected. Harvest times in years of abun
dance were times of joy and rejoicing, looked forward to
with happy anticipations by the farmer and husbandman
during a Sunday saunter through the fields amidst the
ripening erops. Was the great harvest spoken of in the
text, when the bright-winged servants would be the in-
gatherers, expected with the same cheerful confidence ? I
do not pretend to give the exact words, but somewhat of
this form the discourse took, and as the preacher leant
upon the shining marble pulpit, speaking as one affection
ately reasoning with friends, there was an attentive
interest observable in every face, not always to be met

A Somersetshire " St. Rogue's." 107
with in a rural church on a warm Sunday, when the balm
of the air and the very hum of insect life in the surround
ing fields sometimes, as an Irish preacher once observed,
" awaken a drowsiness in the congregation very discourag
ing to the man who has to address them." One would
fain hope that the majority who heard the discourse had
some passage of it suggested to them in the course of the
afternoon or evening, when, they walked out into the fields
for a little " meditative farming," which most country
folks are fond of on the nnworking Sunday afternoon.
They could not help thinking of it, for there was a fidelity
of touch in the pastoral picture which the preacher drew,
that must have brought up the familiar objects of the
field and homestead to their minds, and made these objects
when again seen recall the sermon to their memories. In
the abundance or otherwise of the harvest the clergyman
— be he rural or urban — has more than a material interest.
In seasons of great scarcity the layman, whose circum
stances place him above the pressure of extreme prices,
hears, but as it were from a distance, the cry of the poor,
and perhaps contributes from his wealth or competence,
as the case may be, to their relief ; but the clergyman is
brought . face to face in daily and hourly contact and
interview with distress, while it is utterly impossible for
him to help all. He hears the complaints of thin-faced
want ; he sees the last crust divided amongst the pinched
children ; he hears the sharp querulousness in every
dingy court or miserable cottage, which he can hardly
have the heart to rebuke ; and if he counsels patience, he
is perhaps met with a peevish retort from those who at
other times were respectful and thankful, " that it is very
well for folks who have enough to counsel resignation to
those who have not an ounce of bread or a peck of potatoes
in a house filled with hungry mouths." On all hands he
feels at such times the difficulty experienced by Moses,
" And Moses spake so to the children of Israel, but they
hearkened not unto Moses, for anguish of spirit and for
cruel bondage." It requires a bright and strong faith for
these poor people to recognise the mercies of God in the
miseries of the present ; and at best they perhaps but sigh
for the refuge of the grave, where gnawing hunger and

108 The Church-Goer.
high food prices cannot reach them, for even the patient
Job himself cried out under his suffering, " Wherefore is
light given unto him that is in misery, and life unto the
bitter in soul."
The opposite of this — the bright reverse of the medal —
is a good harvest — plenty and moderate prices ; when
abundance makes the face of men to shine like oil ; when
in the city " there is no complaining in our streets," and
in the country is realised that picture of pastoral pros
perity drawn by the Psalmist, " That our garners may
be full, affording all manner of store." A harvest sermon
is then only the merest recognition of God's mercy, and
its omission, in my mind, so much an act of ingratitude,
that I should be glad to see it ordered that there be
such a sermon in every church throughout the kingdom.
And how much more touching is a sermon like this than
some of our " Harvest Homes," which are organized with
so elaborate a preparation. I knew an old Shropshire
farmer, as fine an old fellow and good a Churchman as
ever lived, when he had filled his last wagon, and before it
moved from the field, got all his labourers round it, who,
with uncovered heads, sang
" Praise God, from whom all blessings flow."
It was a short and simple open-air service, followed by a
division of bacon and flour to each man, that enabled them
to enjoy a literal harvest home in their own cottages.
Such a service as this on each farm, and such a sermon
as that I heard on Sunday in each church, would form
a far more suitable and comely celebration than those
hybrid holidays now becoming fashionable, and which
threaten to leave a very faint line of demarcation between
riot and religion.

Sn'bixc amongst fyt Santr-Pills.
THERE is a piece of scandal, preserved in Wood's
" Athense Oxonienses," of Dr. Thornborough, Bishop
of Bristol about the time of James I. He was educated
at Magdalen College, says the narrative, but he never
studied, and in conjunction with a relative, named
Pickney, spent his time in " catching conies and wooing
girls." Berrow, about two miles from the quiet watering-
place of Burnham, and in the midst of the sand-hills,
would have been just the living for him, so far at least
as conies were concerned, for they have not only honey
combed the sea-banks that screen the little church from
the wild waves, but actually burrowed in the bleak
churchyard between the mounds under which " the rude
forefathers of the hamlet sleep." Here, for six days in
the week, his lordship might have amused himself with
nets and ferrets harmlessly enough, but not very episco-
pally, while he helped the world to scriptural criticisms
quite as ingenious and enlarged as some of Bishop
Colenso's, by showing how the nature of rabbits in
Berrow and the neighbourhood of Jerusalem differed ; for
whereas the Psalmist says, " The high hills are a refuge
for the wild goats, and the rocks for the conies," the
latter on the Somersetshire shore of the Bristol Channel
strongly affect sand.
The musical peal of old Burnham tower had begun to
play, when, like Chryses, in the " Iliad,"
" Silent I wandered by the sounding main,"
resolved to ascertain by a personal visit if there really
were a parson, service, and congregation in the church,
the top of whose little battlemented tower I noticed just
109

110 The Church-Goer.
peeping over the sand-hills, while taking a walk along the
beach the previous evening. When I had gone a couple
of miles, I climbed knee-deep in drifts to where the long
dry grass gave me rather better footing, but there I had
to pick my way through an interminable rabbit warren,
where the multitude of holes made so many " pitfalls "
for the pedestrian who was not as persevering and
cautious as John Bunyan's Christian. Calculating the
journey rather by the distance than the difficulty of the
way, I could hear the clergyman's voice in the first
lesson — that terrible first lesson, telling of the bloody
zeal of the slaughterous and hard-driving Jehu — just as
I slided off a sand-hill in at the south porch ; for hills
surround the little church, though not in so sublime a
fashion as they do Jerusalem. As I looked at the old
building, simple and yet venerable, and thought of the
generations that must have worshipped in it, I mentally
wondered how often in bygone ages must the parson and
congregation have had to be dug out, when the stormy
winter eddies had whirled a sand-drift round the sacred
structure, blocking up doors and windows, and making
the buried worshippers rejoice that there was a tower, so
that the people engaged in the humane business of dis
interring them might know where to look for the church,
there being no record or tradition of any sand-drift suf
ficiently heavy to submerge the steeple.
Observing the desert Sahara-like aspect of its sur
roundings — the churchyard, which was only the desolate
slope of a sand-hill, where no friendly yew tree could
live to shelter the graves of the sleepers, and where even
a few blades of dry grass refused to clothe the little
barrows — I expected to find the congregation of a cor
respondingly rude' and primitive character — some half-
dozen Robinson Crusoes and their men Fridays, in tar
paulin suits, or at most a select gathering of civilized
shrimp-fishers : but was surprised to see instead, not only
a fair gathering of farmers and their families, but ac
tually a small sprinkling of the latest Parisian fashions,
including the full-blown white necktie and the dainty
walking-stick worn by ladies. Great, certainly, is the
enterprise of modern mode. Here, where one would

Set-vice amongst the Sand-Hills. Ill
almost have expected to find the customs and costume of
the Ancient Britons — blue paint and rabbit skins still
lingering, before resigning the island for ever in favour
of Manchester cottons and wash prints — to meet instead
the "newest thing " out in the Longchamps or the walk
at Vichy, wras to me, I confess, astonishing, recalling to
mind the remark of a modern traveller in Egypt,
who suddenly encountered a nursery g-overness and a
troop of young children, when turning the corner of the
Great Pyramid of Cheops, " that there was now no place
so remote where yon might not be reminded of Brighton."
No matter, however ; there is no harm in a pretty little
cravat under a pretty little dimpled chin, or a clouded
walking cane; and if I was surprised to see tbe latest
fashions in so rustic a church amongst tbe sand-hills and
the conies, I was equally delighted to find the services so
decorously and devoutly performed. The next parish on
the other side is Brean, in a fatter and more fertile region,
but there — as I know from a visit paid and printed some
months since — was the dry-rot inside, which so eat into
the woodwork, and I was going to say the flesh work, that
there was hardly a seat on which you could safely sit
down. At Berrow-super-Rabbit-burrows, however, you
had a neat little interior — too rich, perhaps, in whitewash
and yellow-ochre for fastidious ecclesiologists — pews and
benches cleanly kept, and a harmonium nicely played,
while a little choir of rosy healthy faces under rustic
straw hats surrounded it, and chanted and sung the
canticles, hymns, etc., brightly and boldly. If it had
been winter, and a strong sou'-wester, I should like to
have heard the wind blowing through the long sand
grass, and, with the sound of the waves, blending into the
soft cadences of a pretty melody, now very popular in
churehes, and in this instance adapted to words which, if
not very poetical, seemed appropriate to the place —
"Lord, wheresoe'er Thy people meet,
There they behold Thy mercy-seat,
Where'er they seek Thee Thou art found,
And every spot is hallowed ground ; "
even the little church amidst the bleak sand-hills of

112 The Church-Goer.
Berrow, which somehow recalled to mind the peroration
of Bishop Kaye's speech in the House of Lords : " My
Lords, you may persecute the Church if you will : you
may strip her of her temporalities, yon may banish her
clergy; but in some parts of the country the Church of
England, with her scriptural doctrines, her modest rites,
and decent ceremonies, will be found existing to the end
of time."
The church of Berrow, which consists of a nave and
south aisle and chancel, is evidently of some antiquity.
With its low-lying, plain, but symmetrical proportions —
shapely tower lit by small pierced stone louvres, south
porch, and old mullioned windows — it presents a vener
able and rustic appearance. Yet it contained no monu
ments. Nor is this perhaps to be wondered at ; for a
church amongst the sand-hills was not the place to look
for cross-legged crusaders ; nevertheless, at one, and that
the only tablet on the walls, I was surprised. It in
formed me that near the place were interred the mortal
remains of the Rev. — Durston, rector of Compton
Greenfield, in Gloucestershire, who died some time in the
year 1770, and whose widow had erected that marble
slab to his memory. It set me thinking what could have
induced the parson of a parish on the pleasant Severn
side, with a name suggestive of green fields, to have his
body conveyed to this out-of-the-way place, where dry
spear grass is the only thing approaching to verdure,
there to lie — his
" Obsequies sung by the green plover flying," —
until the day of doom. Burke said he would sooner lie
under a hawthorn in a green country churchyard than in
Westminster Abbey ; but there is no hawthorn here — not
a shrub — the graves of the departed being hardly dis
tinguishable from the mounds of sand which the rabbits
have thrown up. A hundred years ago Berrow must
have been as removed from the civilized world as Arabia
Deserta is now ; what, then, could have induced the rector
of Compton Greenfield to have his body conveyed all this
way, at some trouble and cost, to lie amidst conies, I
cannot guess. Perhaps he had a fancy, like the old

Service amongst the Sand-Hills. 113
English admiral, who got buried by the sea- shore, to
have the second sound which he heard when he awoke on
the judgment-day that of the element to which he was so
accustomed, the first, of course being the archangel's
trump. At least Parson Durston has all the south wall
to himself and his wife, which would not be the case in a
more populous parish. It is true that the iron stove-pipe,
carried horizontally along the south aisle, cuts the in
scription on the marble tablet in two, but in doing so also
helps to keep his memory warm in the minds of the
Berrowonians. A good sermon was preached, " well spoken out of
hand," by a young clergyman — whether the vicar or not I
cannot say — from the text (Isa. xliv. 3), " For I will pour
water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry
ground : I will pour My spirit upon thy seed, and My
blessing upon thine offspring." There was a good deal
about the Jews in it ; so much so, that I thought we
were about to have a collection in aid of the society for
their conversion, but it was not so. He said, " we owed
a great deal to the Jews " — a home truth, which might
startle many an attendant in the fashionable churches of
Belgravia, but I should think passed unnoticed amongst
a congregation of Berrowonians.

flaniraff;
A LOITEE IN AND AROUND THE OLD CATHEDRAL.
"TF I were not Alexander, I would be the Marquis of
_L Bute," but, being neither, I have to devote myself to
certain vulgar and sublunar matters, which called me a
few days ago to Cardiff. Now Cardiff will never, I fear,
be known by the name of the gate of the Temple, the
" Beautiful," and if I were not afraid of offending certain
proud Cambrian susceptibilities, I should say it was more
useful than ornamental. But I suppose they had to knock
it together so fast to meet the demands of coal and com
merce, that they had not time to exercise taste, if they
ever had any, upon it. It is not, therefore, to be wondered
at that finding I had five or six hours to spare after I
finished my business, and before the Ely steamed back to
Bristol, I began to cast about me to see how I could better
employ my leisure than in being baked on hot flagways
or smothered by the tobacco-smoke of foreign sailors.
Llandaff at once occurred to me. A couple of miles of
cool walking along the banks of the Taff would take me
there, and a loiter in and around the old cathedral would
be a happy relief after the bustle of this Babel of black
diamonds. One incident, however, occurred in my walk through
Cardiff which, from its oddity, I cannot help relating. A
large black and tan terrier was lying apparently asleep on
the hot flags in front of a tavern. I doubt if I should
have noticed the animal, but that a man with his hand in
a sling came up as I passed, and most attentively observed
it, stooping down to have a nearer view of the creature's
face, which looked drowsily up at him.
114

Llandaff. 115
" He seems in his senses," said the man, turning to me,
and for a moment I fancied he was speculating on my
sanity, but I was quickly undeceived. " That dog, sir,
gave me an ugly bite a short time ago," he continued,
" and they offered to kill it if I wished, but I said no ; for
then I should never have known whether he was mad or
not. I come most days to see him, just for my own com
fort, to ascertain that he keeps in his senses ; and upon
my conscience, it is more reasonable he seems to grow, so
it makes my mind easy."
You are a sensible fellow, I thought, and have gone the
right way to work. It would be well for the world, if
men adopted the same considerate course with one another,
and waited to see whether there was any lasting harm
done or mischief meant before they jumped at violent
conclusions, and hated or knocked their neighbour on the
head for what, if they took a little time to deliberate,
would be either forgotten or forgiven.
So moralizing I crossed the bridge, and struck into the
fields on my road to the ancient cathedral. A footway
leads through the pleasant green meadows, and a polite
notice-board nailed to a great elm, asks the public " to be
good enough to keep to the path." The moment I read it
I felt in honour bound not to tread down a single blade
of grass ; such is the force of civility, which I expect is as
good a protection to property as some of those damnatory,
denunciatory, and minatory notice boards which treat the
public as though they were wild beasts, threatening to
shoot them down with spring guns or snap them up with
man traps. Until a few months ago, a board placed in
one of the most frequented parts of Clifton apprised all
whom it might concern, that " savage dogs were kept on
these premises to worry and tear all vagabonds, thieves,
and trespassers," for whom probably the ferocious an
nouncement had as much terror as though it were a Pope's
Bull of Excommunication.
More than a dozen years had elapsed since my former
visit to Llandaff. Service was then performed in the
Lady Chapel and a piece of the chancel, and all the west
end was a roofless ruin. The wind whistled through the
airy shaft work, as through clusters of reeds, in the grand

116 The Church-Goer.
west window ; nettles and dock-leaves covered with rank
luxuriance the floor which is now laid with encaustic tiles
and furnished with carved oak seats ; while glass is in
serted between the old stone mullions, and the sacred
ground once more won back from the domain of desola
tion to that of devotion.
These dozen years had certainly wrought wonderful
changes in the old cathedral, which for a century or so
previously, unsparing time and still more unsparing
parish functionaries, who, like Saul of Tarsus, " made
havoc in the churches," had been wasting or mutilating.
The hand of a master builder is now, however, evident
upon the old minster, not skinning or filming o'er with
mere superficial restoration the maltreated walls and win
dows, but doing the work thoroughly, though by degrees,
while leaving here and there the domestic casements and
the square-headed dwelling-house doors inserted during
the last century, to tell by contrast the tale of what had
been done and is now being undone.
It was a delicious day. Here, in one part, the old
bleached walls of tbe building blazed in the sunshine, and
there in another they seemed to sleep in deep shadow in
the cool shelter of which the lizard might have luxuriated.
Two men, with a camera, were taking photographic views,
and appeared quite enthusiastic artists. They had been,
the older told me, round to most of the cathedrals in Eng
land, taking sun pictures of the antique piles, and if they
could always have secured such glorious weather as it
then was, theirs must have been a pleasant occupation
enough — a sort of Old Mortality calling in its way — a
kind of ecclesiastical gipsy life, if one might so speak.
For what with picturing these venerable piles " shadowy
with remembrances of the majestic past," and communing
with the sublime and beautiful of our old master builders,
they must themselves, in time, become mediasvalized.
When I emerged again from the cathedral they had taken
the edifice at most points, and, like the free-masons, their
fellow-craftsmen, had proceeded from labour to refresh
ment ; their frugal dinner being spread out on a pocket-
handkerchief under the shadow of a patriarchal yew-tree.
A few workmen were still employed in the interior, so

Llandaff. 117"
without the interposition of the verger with his bunch of
jingling keys, I entered through the open north porch.
" Like the shadow of a great rock in a weary land" was
the refreshing coolness shed from that embowered roof,
which interposed between me and the blazing noon-day
sun. One of the charms of Llandaff is that it takes the
stranger by surprise. Near a handful of cottages, nest
ling under a green hill and by a bright trout stream, in a
spot where you might look for a village church, you
alight upon a fine old collegiate one, with its monuments
and memorials of a long gone past — effigies of mitred
bishops under canopies, and of mailed knights and stately
ladies on altar tombs. Not that " the rude forefathers of
the hamlet" have treated the sculptured chivalry or pre
lacy very respectfully. Familiarity, they say, breeds con
tempt, and generations of Llandaffians had carved their
names on the cuisses, helmets, and leg-pieces of recumbent
warriors, and on the robes and stomachers of haughty
dames who slept beside them, in a manner that told too
plainly the age of chivalry had gone, since Hodges and
hinds, "Harry Viners," and "Charley Hurders," found
leisure during the litanies of the last forty years to lug
out the pocket knives with which they cut their cheese
and bacon, and make their signs manual on the marble
limbs of the Audreys and the Matthews.
Ours, indeed, I fear, is an irreverential age. Neither
stones nor marble have sermons or epics for us. The
sculptured prelate fared no better than the carved war
rior. Those mitred figures under canopies in the north
aisle may be any or all three of Llandaff's great bishops
— Duricanus, "The Golden-headed," St. Teilo, "The
Blessed," or Bledri, " The Wise:" but neither wisdom nor
sanctity has saved their noses from being rubbed flat on
their faces by the hand of time or the horny palms of
peasants ; while yon carved skeleton in its shroud has
ceased ior centuries to inculcate that lesson of mortality
which the pious stone-cutter intended it should preach to
all futurity. Rude and simple indeed were the moral
lessons which the old masons and joiners chiselled out in
stone and wood to show the vanity and fleeting character

US The Church-Goer.
of life ; but I doubt if that sculptured " cadaver " there
under the canopy was a whit more impressive upon the
generation, to teach whom it was first set up, than the
hatchments which we see hung out in front of great
houses are upon the revellers, who assemble nightly in the
neighbouring mansions beneath the shadow of the emblem
of death and mourning. Memento-mori's, in fact, like
" truth " in the Persian proverb, " are very good for one's
neighbours." We don't apply them to ourselves, and I
suspect that mine host, who sent round the silver skeleton
to his guests at the old Egyptian feasts, was tbe first, as
soon as the symbol of death was removed by the chief
butler, to set the example of full bumpers ; for there
was grim humour, if not sharp satire, in that painter or
publican who in the London suburb set up the sign of
the " Jolly Undertakers."
I don't suppose for a moment the dean and chapter of
Llandaff ever meant it; but the text which they have con
spicuously inscribed across the front of their fine organ,
with its projecting set of horizontal pipes, is capable of
being read by an ill-natured visitor in an uncomplimen
tary sense to choir and congregation: " 0 all ye beasts
and cattle, praise and magnify the Lord." It is scriptural
certainly, but a sentence capable of a less invidious appli
cation might, I think, have been selected from the same
Psalm. The literature of a church door is indeed of a very
curious and mixed character, fiscal and ecclesiastical, legal
and lucrative. Thus one turned, as in this case, from a
text of scripture and list of services to a paper which few
people with incomes amounting to a hundred a year read
with much gratification, and which was addressed to
" persons chargeable under the respective schedules (D)
and (E) for profits arising from trades, professions, etc.,
to deliver in lists, declarations, and statements," to an
individual whose name I forget, but whose place of abode
is the parish mill. After recovering from the shock of
the income tax paper, I sat on the tomb of an Ap Griffiths,
lulled by the buzz of the large black honey-bee and the
silvery sound from the adjacent mill-stream, while the pea-
blossoms from the cottage gardens filled the air with per-

Llandaff. 119
fume. It was a great contrast to the discordant noises of
the grimy coal capital from which I had escaped ; and to
increase this sense of repose, on every other flag or head
stone upon which my eye fell, I read the words, " Here
rests the body," or " Here rests from his labour," etc. I
was thinking how grateful to the human heart at all
times seems this idea of rest, when a familiar, rattling,
rushing noise broke in on my reverie, and the sound of
the 1.35 down train on the South Wales line, harshly re
calling to mind the beggarly five-shdling dividend on my
Great Western stock, dissipated the sunny day dream,
and sent " St. Duricanus, the gold-headed," flying back
affrighted to the shades from this iron age of ours.*
It was time, too, for me to be off, so I retired from the
tomb of Ap Griffiths, and retraced my steps to the Welsh
metropolis of Mammon. In my way through the village,
however, an incident occurred to bring back my equani
mity. The same architect who is restoring tbe cathedral
has been at work on several new structures, which stand
out in strong relief from the cottages in the rustic street.
One I perceived was the National School, another ap
peared to me a Training College, but of a third at tbe
east entrance to the vdlage I could not guess the use, so
I asked a country woman what it was. " I forget what
they call it," was the reply, " but it is a house the bishop
has built to keep his will in." Well, I thought, bishops
have sometimes left curious and valuable testamentary
remains, but his lordship of Llandaff's will must be as in
teresting as the Sybdline books kept in the Capitol, since
he has raised so elaborate a Gothic structure for its cus
tody. But as I turned over the matter again in my mind,
the thought struck me that it was the District Registry,
and I asked the woman if it were not so. " Yes sure, sir,"
she replied, "that's just the name, but I forgot it."
* This five shilling dividend of the G.W.B. will (not very pleasantly
for many, I fear) fix the date of my Llandaff " loiter."

% Ms|r €\mz\.
A LATE Bishop of Cork — whose nervous energy was
great — astonished the congregation of the Cathedral
the first Sunday after his instalment by preaching, not
from the pulpit, but the throne. Here, stalking up and
down, as an irreverent spectator declared, " like a wild
animal in a cage, " the excitable prelate poured out, with
a fluent fervour that almost amounted to fierceness, a
discourse that lasted for nearly an hour. His lordship
said he liked to have full play for his energies, and with
a spacious enclosure at his command, from which to
deliver a peripatetic sermon, he did not choose to be
" cabined, cribbed, confined " in a narrow pulpit.
Thus, under other circumstances, you will sometimes
find in the Church men who cannot bear to have their
energies shut up within a limited sphere; and there have
recently been instances of men of this active, aggressive
character, who have left the rose-covered parsonage and
the old grey-porched country church, to undertake the
rough work of a raw district teeming with poor people
without any poetry in them. In the most uninviting
quarter of Clare Market, a young clergyman, who quitted
a romantic living in the country, opened a kind of Mission
Lodging-bouse for the working population, with tbe per
mission of the Bishop of London, and covered the front of
it with texts of Scripture, that those who run may read a
word of comfort or encouragement from the walls of this
working, weary Babylon. We even hear of Colonial
bishops, who walk their visitations through wildernesses,
swim rivers with their clothes tied in bundles on their
heads, and then dress, and preach from the branch of some
forest tree to congregations of settlers, on whose ears the
120

A Welsh Church. 121
words of the old English Bible and old English Prayers
sound like a sweet and once familiar but now half -forgotten
melody. There is a Christian chivalry which' courts and
casts itself into difficult situations ; clerical path-finders,
who love to cut their way through human prairies at home
and abroad ; who penetrate town courts where sin riots
and disease lurks ; climb to pestilential garrets and de
scend into dark coal mines, and count death gain if met
with in such work.
But all are not naturally constituted for such tasks.
There is a chivalric spirit to do and to suffer in some men,
which others constitutionally lack — are not born with ; but
yet may be eminently useful in circumstances where self-
sacrifice is not so imperatively called for, and the battle
with the powers of darkness has not to be waged upon a
scene so appalling ; and He who has planted the humble
myrtle as well as the forest tree, finds a field for both. In
deed, if we could have our wish, and much as we deplore
that " want — the one great world-want — earnestness, " we
should not like to fill this earth with the sternly heroic,
spiritual, moral, or martial. As Pope says in his "Essay
on Man," " If nature thundered in our opening ears,
And stunned us with the music of the spheres,
How would we wish that Heaven had left us still
The whispering zephyr and the murmuring rill."
This was a long train of reflection, you will say, to have
been evoked by a little rude Welsh church on the one side
of tbe road, and a pleasant rose-covered thatched parsonage
on the other. But so it was. Taking a walk in summer
from Bridgend to Southemdown, I passed through the
hamlet of St. Bride's, and as it was a beautiful morning,
and the picture of parochial clerical life struck me as very
charming and comfortable, I at first contrasted it in my
mind with the great missionary work to be done in city
slums and town courts, thinking how different a life the
tenant of this vicarage, whoever he was, had to that of
the urban labourer, when I checked myself by remember
ing that the rural population must have their pastor too,
and that perhaps there was many a good, kind, careful

122 The Church Goer.
spirit cut out for the latter sphere, who, like ambition,
must be "made of sterner stuff" than nature has moulded
him in, to be fit for the town or foreign mission. What
if, after paying his daily visit to the parish school and
looking in at old John or old Betty's cottage in the village,
he finds time, his duty done, to cast a fly upon tbe spark
ling trout stream, or bud and train his roses, we must not
begrudge him his innocent pleasures. Knowing nothing
of the vicar of St. Bride's, I pictured to myself some easy,
quiet, rustic, old-fashioned gentleman, who had dim re
membrances of Jesus College where he had got his de
gree and learned to carve a goose, as the dweller in that
straw-roofed parsonage, with its little flower-garden and
paddock : one who preached his grandfather's sermons,
and had a "lithographed set" for special occasions. My
ideal, however, vanished when next Sunday I visited the
church, and saw a man in the prime of life, with a prompt
expression of face, a keen clear style and a rapid, energetic
delivery, walk into the pulpit, and preach one of the best
sermons I had heard for a long time, hardly once looking
at the notes before him.
An hour or two before church time I had strolled down
to tbe beach, and when my watch told me, unless I was
prepared to be late for service, I must start, I half per
suaded myself I should get more good by looking at the
waves and cliffs — worshipping, as Carlyle says, in "the
cathedral of immensities, " which in my case would consist
of lazily sitting on a rock, and watching the great swell
"preachers" roll in, and break themselves in foam upon
the shore — than in going to hear some sleepy discourse,
or, if not sleepy, perhaps some hot doctrinal exercise
dashed with Calvinism. It is surprising when we are in
an indolent humour on a Sunday morning, how we like
to bamboozle ourselves into the delusion that it is not
laziness that detains us loitering in the field or by the
shore, or at home over a pleasant book, but an " elevated
love of nature, " or of profitable study. One of the best
things Spurgeon ever said was when he stated he had
some acquaintance with "worshippers of nature, who on
Sundays went out into the fields instead of to church or
chapel ; for he often saw them pass his door with bird-

A Welsh Church. 123
cages and bull-dogs." It is true a man may get a solemn
thought by the sea-shore sometimes, when he will not by
sitting in his pew and listening to a sermon ; but which
of us can say we ever turned our back on the church,
when the bell was ringing, and our steps to the beach,
with that single purpose of profit in our minds ? I grant
you there is a grand broad- church sound in the sea, as it
comes rolling in deeply-swelling sentences upon the shore,
which seems to rebuke doctrinal hair-splitting. Still,
were I to honestly call my fit of nature- worship by its
right name on the occasion in question, I should call it
idleness — sheer idleness, sir. That I did not give way to
it was perhaps more attributable to domestic pressure
than any power of self-denial on my part.
To St. Bride's, which, as I said, is a simple little Welsh
church, nearly as much has been done inside in point of
decorous arrangement and accommodation as a structure
of its architectural nakedness wdl admit. The chancel is
the poorest part ; and I think the rich dowager — a brave
Protestant old lady — who keeps it for the use of her living
household and dead ancestors, might try to make a little
more of it.
What the rural churches throughout England, so far
as the musical part of the service is concerned, owe to
certificated schoolmasters, we do not often stop to inquire,
though no one can think without pleasure on tbe improve
ment which has of late been effected in this particular.
Instead of the barbarism of the old parish choir, when the
congregation sat to look at the smith playing the clarionet,
and the carpenter working at the bassoon and the
village shoemaker scraping a great bass-viol, while a
few discordant voices supplied the vocal department, we
had here (as they have now in most country churches)
strong well-sustained general devotional singing, under
the leadership of the parish schoolmaster, who seemed to
know his work very well, and do it without an organ,
harmonium, or even grinder — the last a rebellious instru
ment, which (as we saw in a newspaper paragraph, the
other day), will sometimes persist in playing when it is
not wanted, and has to be turned out into the churchyard
for its noisy contumacy. Everywhere, singing is a very

124 The Church-Goer.
effective part of public worship, but in Wales it is for the
congregation indispensable. Taffy cannot do without it :
he will hear himself and others sing, and if he does not
get it at church, he will run off to chapel where he can
have it to his heart's content.
The floral decoration of graves — to which gentle and
pretty observance the Welsh are so partial— prevails also
at St. Bride's. This fancy of crowning the head of the
King of Terrors with lilies, pinks, and verbenas makes
Death, as it were, seem one of the family; so that we
might address him, like the saint of Assisi, as "our
brother.'

% ^orb |5tsJ)ojr's (5nt§roni^atbn Im |§rmr]j.
IF a bride or a bishopric is worth having, they are worth
going through the ceremony usual on the acceptance
of either. A clerical wit, when he heard that the late
Dr. Denison, of Salisbury, was about to be married,
expressed his surprise that a grave prelate could pass
through the ordeal of flirting, courting, and popping the
question. "All I can fancy his being able to say to a
fair party who interested him," observed the humorist,
"is, 'You will please meet me in the Vestry after service.' "
The form of enthronization appears to have had more
embarrassing and nervous terror for the new Bishop of
Gloucester and Bristol than even the nuptial rite ; for
though he has been hovering round our city for a fort
night, and actually alighted amongst us on Tuesday, the
Chapter could not coax him to come and be enthroned in
person. He coyly kept out of their way, and, in answer to
all their blandishing invitations, murmured, " By proxy,
gentlemen, if you please."
Now, I can very well understand how to a quiet, retir
ing, unostentatious man, it must be a little trying to be
marched in a procession, with minstrels and maces before
one, from the Chapter House, along the corridor of the
cloisters, through the nave, up the choir, and into a large
carved mahogany canopied pew, like the Great Bed of
Ware, the organ playing a stately tune all the time.
But if a bishop has not got nerve for this, where is he to
get nerve to wield the weighty crozier of a double diocese?
Could he take upon himself the episcopacy without this
ancient form, well and good ; but since the law still calls
for the custom, I think he might have gone through it in
his own proper self. 125

126 The Church-Goer.
I daresay there is no man who gets married that does
not look with some nervous shrinking to the nuptial
spectacle in which he is about to take a prominent part,
who is not sensitively alive to being gazed down upon
from crowded galleries and out upon from full pews, as
he is wafted by a gauzy breeze of bridesmaids up the
aisle, and placed shoulder to shoulder at the communion
rails with a little palpitating piece of humanity, shrouded
with Honiton, and both walled in with tarletan and
bouquets. But still he'd prefer — I should, at least — pass
ing through all the sensitive tumult incidental to such a
scene, to skulking into a Registrar's Office and " taking
the benefit of the act."
There is nothing in the enthronization half as formid
able, in my mind, to a diffident nature, as there is in the
marriage ceremony ; for the service is much shorter and
simpler ; you have nothing to say, everything is said to
you. There is no whispering devotion with lips glued to
gether by nervousness, or fluttering manipulation of a
little white hand in search of the ring finger.
However, this is matter of opinion : and for some
reason stronger than mere matter of ordinary convenience,
Dr. Baring determined that he should be enthroned by
proxy — a vicarious privilege which, though permissible
in marriage only to royal princes, is allowed without ex
ception, I believe, to all entering upon the prelatic state.
The time appointed was Saturday, at eleven in the
forenoon — the proxy chosen for the bishop by the chapter
was their precentor, the Rev. R. C. Caley.* As I entered
the cathedral, the only symptom of the approaching rite
which I saw was the apparitor (Holland) in his black
gown and wand in hand, gossiping in the nave with the

* Mr. Caley, who occupied the post of Precentor for, I believe,
over a quarter of a century, will be well remembered by my older
readers as the beau ideal of a cathedral cleric. His pleasant, kindly
face, courteous manner, and upright, almost military, carriage, are
still vivid in my memory ; so that I can see him in my mind's eye, gold-
headed bamboo cane in hand, crossing the Green, his long curled hair
resting on his coat collar, " the best-dressed parson in the diocese" (as
Dean Lamb called him). He was justly proud of his part in the en
thronization which took place in 1861.

A Lord Bishop's Enthronization by Proxy. 127
vergers. Some half-dozen people were sauntering amongst
the columns, reading "mortuary English" on marble
tablets ; the bell was tinkling dozily, and flying particles of
defunct abbots, mote-like, were playing in a sunbeam that,
striking through a high window, rested upon the pave
ment. Nowhere was the slightest official stir observable.
The apparitor took out his snuff-box, and handed it to the
vergers, who, in turn, took their hands out of the wide
sleeves of their blue cloaks and helped themselves to a
pinch. Presently the snbsacristan flitted forth from
the choir. The apparitor blew the snuff from his fingers,
and beckoned to him. " Well ? " said the snbsacristan.
" You will please keep the archdeacon's stall for Mr.
Charles Clarke " [the registrar], replied the apparitor.
The former nodded assent, and, passing through the
western wicket, was lost to view.
I took np my station in a pew in the choir, and waited
the appearance of the procession. The congregation did
not number twenty, and the Saturday morning hum of
the outer city reached us in the tranquil spot as we sat
listening to the bell. A part of the ceremony was to take
place in the Chapter Room. : there was, therefore, some
trifling delay, and the singing men, in their surplices,
loitering in the nave, were quietly awaiting the appear
ance of the procession from the cloisters. Once or twice
Mr. Corfe peeped over the back of the organ loft, like
Sister Anne, to see if " they were coming." After the
second survey, the organ swelled out, so I concluded the
" cortege " (as the newspapers call it) could not be far off.
I slipped out of my pew into the south aisle, to see for
myself. I sometimes fancy a collegiate procession is like
a paper-kite reversed — the little singing boys, two and
two, like the tail, go before, and then the broad chapter
follow. It was so now — boys, maces, minor canons, then
the Rev. Proxy, with Canon Moseley, finally the singing
men, not forgetting the registrar and apparitor, and Mr.
Joseph Bessell, the surveyor, who, I think, preceded the
maces; though what he had to "survey," unless it were
the scene, I cannot imagine. In this order, with a fine
voluntary pulsating from the organ-loft overhead, the
procession passed into the choir, continuing its course

128 The Church-Goer.
until it came to the bishop's throne, at the eastern side of
which it drew up in a kind of crescent. The subsacrist
stepped forward and opened the door of the throne, upon
which the Rev. Precentor Caley, with a slight but courtly
inclination of the head, advanced and took possession of
the episcopal seat. The door was then shut, when Mr.
Canon Moseley, bowing to the proxy bishop — who, from
his place within the throne, now confronted the members
of the procession ranged without — read from a paper in a
voice somewhat agitated, doubtless with the imposing
and important character of the occasion, the following
words : —
In the name of God. Amen. I, Henry Moseley, Master of Arts,
one of the Canons of the Cathedral Church of the Holy and Undivided
Trinity of Bristol, by virtue of these letters, committed and directed
to the Dean and Chapter of the said Cathedral Church, by the Vener
able James Croft, Archdeacon of Canterbury, Do induct, install, and
inthrone you, the Bev. Bobert Llewellyn Caley [Mr. Caley bows],
Clerk, Master of Arts, and lawful Proctor of the Bight Beverend
Father in God, Charles Baring, Doctor of Divinity, Lord Bishop of
Gloucester and Bristol, elected, confirmed, and consecrated — and in
the name of the same reverend Father, Bishop of Gloucester and
Bristol aforesaid, into the real, actual, and corporal possession of the
Episcopal See of the whole Bishopric of Gloucester and Bristol afore
said, and of all its rights, dignities, honours, privileges, and ap
purtenances whatsoever, and full power of Episcopal right, Do induct,
install, and inthrone — requiring you, Charles Stewart Clarke [Mr.
Clarke bows] , Notary Public, and all others here present, to bear
witness thereof.
Mr. Canon Moseley bows, the minor canons bow, Mr.
Caley again bows, the singing-men bow, and all file off
to their places, leaving the excellent Precentor-Bishop or
Bishop re-Presenter, as some one called him, in sole and
majestic possession of the throne ; and I am bound to say,
since we had not tbe real bishop himself to install, I do
not know where the Chapter could have gone to find a
more dignified substitute. The Precentor quite became
the throne, and whether it was by accident or otherwise,
his surplice was somewhat puffed out at the arms, so that
to a hasty glance, it offered the optical illusion of lawn
sleeves. There was, I thought, too, a serene expression
of episcopal patronage about him, as he calmly surveyed
the retiring processionists, and adjusted himself to hear,

A Lord Bishop's Enthronization by Proxy. 129
in prelatic ease and dignity, the morning service, which
followed. Mr. Canon Moseley, and his co-bishop-makers,
seemed, I fancy, somewhat surprised at the readiness and
aptitude with which the proxy settled into his temporary
estate. There is an old story of some citizen, who, when
kneeling to be knighted by Charles IL, flushed in tbe
cheeks, overcome by his impending honours. " Pray, don't
blush, my friend," said the monarch; "for I have more
reason to be ashamed than you have." It was quite the
contrary on Saturday, for I do not know whether the
proxy bishop or his enthroners had more reason to be
proud of the transaction. It would be a hardly justifiable
stretch of the imagination to suppose that the recumbent
statue of Abbot Knowle turned on its right elbow, on the
canopied tomb opposite, to take a peep at the new tenant
of the bishop's throne, but, had he done so, I think he
would have admitted that the episcopal seat might have
been less becomingly filled. It is only to be regretted
that some scrap of patronage does not attach to the
twenty-four hours' prelacy, and that the proxy, after all,
has but a barren honour without a morsel of Church pre
ferment to throw to a friend.
It was noticed that neither the Dean nor Canon Girdle-
stone took part in the ceremonial. Whether they thought
it beneath their capitular station to offer homage, even
for an hour, to their own Precentor, I am unable to say ;
but had the Rev. Proxy embraced the opportunity afforded
by his " little brief authority " to lecture the whole
Chapter upon their short-comings, the new bishop possibly
would not have repudiated his representative in this
particular ; for, since be did not choose to come and be
enthroned himself, he owes something to the man who
took that trouble off his hands.

§ristal Ca%btal antr its §is^0ps.
[The following appeared in 1861, just at the close of Bishop
Baring's connection with the diocese of Gloucester and Bristol and
immediately before his translation to Durham.]
IT is more noteworthy than satisfactory that, for fully a
quarter of a century, no bishop of the See has entered
the cathedral pulpit of Bristol. Bishop Monk, if I mis
take not, never appeared in any pulpit during his epis
copate, and Bishop Baring, during his brief government
of the diocese, appeared in almost every pulpit but the
Cathedral one. Why he should avoid preaching within
walls where a Butler and a Newton preached is a mystery
to most people, but so it has happened. He passed by on all
sides, without entering it. With a friendly alacrity, which
cannot be too highly praised as far as it went, he refused
the invitation of no incumbent, however humble his church
or obscure his parish ; but though the Dean and Chapter
of Bristol might be said almost to have gone on their
knees to him, he would never cross the threshold of the
old College, and will depart for the See of Durham as
great a stranger to the ancient minster of our city as
though it stood beside the broken colonnades of Baalbec.
" Among bishops," says the author of " Speculum Episcopi,"
" there would seem to be a dread almost of inhabiting a
cathedral city as though there were some mortal contagion
lurking within its precincts ; perhaps— would it were so—
the majestic pile itself, hallowed and dedicated to the
Great God of Heaven and Earth, falls heavily upon the
conscience, suggesting holy duties abandoned and aspir
ations to which the heart is untuned." But this could
not have been the case with a zealous, earnest, con-
130 '

Bristol Cathedral and its Bishops. 131
scientious man like Bishop Baring, who unsparingly
devoted himself to the work in all save this particular ;
and from what cause the exception occurred must, I sup
pose, now remain a secret for ever. All we have to do is
with the fact that he would never consent to take part in
the public worship of his own cathedral.
Walking a few Sunday mornings ago round by the
brow of Brandon Hill, and seeing the old square embattled
tower " serenely grey " above the green limes, while tbe
massed dwellings and red roofs of the great city, of which
it is the ecclesiastical centre, stretched far and wide
around it, I thought it was just the place in which a
prelate would desire to preach. From the steeples that
cropped up from the close mesh-work of dwellings came
that rush of tuneful clangour, that full metallic concert,
which has struck every sojourner and stranger within our
gates on a Sabbath morning, and which reminds one of
the description given by a Frenchman of a somewhat
similar scene. " Lend your ear to this opera of steeples,"
says Victor Hugo, " and say if ypu know anything more
rich, more gladdening, more dazzling, than that tumult of
bells, than that furnace of music, than those thousand
brazen tones, breathed at once from flutes of stone three
hundred feet high, than that city which is but one
orchestra, than that symphony rushing and roaring like a
tempest." Indeed, if a man wants a treat for eye and ear, let him
take this same walk around the edge of the green hill,
about a quarter to eleven on a Sunday morning, when
the church-bells are ringing, and he will not be dis
appointed. It is repose itself. Repose down among the
large ships lying in the Float in the midst of rafts of
timber ; repose in the paved streets, into which he gets
oblique and partial peeps from his point of elevation ;
repose unbroken even by the flaring signboards that,
fixed upon front and parapet, vaunt the wares in the
closed shops and storehouses beneath ; repose amidst the
tall chimneys and glasshouse cones that give out no smoke
on that morning ; and repose upon the sunny Somerset
shire hill-sides yonder, where the stooks of newly-cut
corn and the recumbent cattle are visible. Why, old

132 The Church-Goer.
Brandon Hill might itself for the moment be converted
into a pulpit, and if no better place could be found for the
preacher than the breech of that great Russian gun, I
would not thank him, with such a suggestive panorama
before his eyes, to give us a stirring homily.
You descend from your eminence, cross the Green, and
enter the north porch of the cathedral, and finding it
filled with a large congregation, a fourth of them perhaps
Dissenters, whom curiosity, or the love of novelty, or
reverence, or any other motive less commendable than
reverence, has drawn within those aisles ; and you naturally
say, This is just the place for a bishop to try his powers
in. Those worthy Nonconformists whom you recognise
on not a few of the rush-bottomed chairs in aisle and nave
have already, in spite of themselves, been struck with the
architectural solemnity of the place and the fine harmonies
of the choral service. So strike while the iron is hot,
my lord. Mount the pulpit, and let them hear something
worthy of the situation, and you will quickly find the
attentive schismatics smooth their faces from the sardonic
smile which the verger, with his "silver poker" (as
Sydney Smith called it) walking before you, has
momentarily raised. I think it is a fact deserving not
only the attention of bishops, but of all ministering in
cathedrals in large cities, that, in these places of worship,
more than in the parish churches, are opportunities
offered to reach the nonconformist mind ; for your Dis
senter, who might not choose to be seen by his Episcopalian
neighbours entering the latter, has no delicacy or indis
position of the kind, so far as the former are concerned.
Cathedrals are, according to his fancy, a sort of common
ground, public buildings " belonging to a branch of the
Civil Service," like court-houses and guildhalls, which he
may visit without remark or having his consistency
challenged. In Bristol Cathedral, at least, Dissenters in
considerable numbers may be seen on most Sundays, and
if, in addition to an impressive service, they hear an
effective discourse, they are sure to come again and again,
and with each visit the distance between them and the
Establishment is lessened. Surplice and lawn-sleeves, if
worn by an able and earnest preacher have, I believe,

Bristol Cathedral and its Bishops. 133
nothing so very repugnant for them ; but a poor flimsy
jejune discourse — the mere mixture of water and Chris
tianity — seems all the poorer to them when contrasted
with surrounding circumstances and rich accessories of
worship. Humdrum is doubly humdrum spoken amidst
piers and high-reaching arches ; while the warm tints of
the painted window make commonplaces seem the colder.
It is therefore I say that, whether it be for bishop, priest,
or deacon, a more suitable scene, or one more worthy
of their best and highest efforts, than the pulpit of a
cathedral could not be found. And so thought old
Latimer, who "preached for the most part everie Sundaie
twise " in his Cathedral of Worcester, " to the no small
shame of other loitering and unpreaching prelates." So
thought Bishop Ridley, of London, " to whose sermons in
St. Paul's the people resorted, swarming about him like
bees, and coveting the juice of his fruitful doctrine." So
thought an eminent Bristolian, Tobias Matthew, " who,
while Bishop of Durham, preached 550, and while Arch
bishop of York, 721 sermons," great numbers of them in
both ancient minsters. So again thought Bishop Lake,
who was " apt to teach the living with his pious sermons
in his cathedral." So Hooper, Ken, and Bedell, who
"preached constantly twice a Sunday in his cathedral."
Bishop Jewell delivered discourses in Salisbury collegiate
pulpit until, being weak and infirm, his friends remon
strated with him that he overtaxed himself, when he
answered, " it became best a bishop to die preaching in
his pulpit " ; whde Bishop Hall makes it a prominent
point in his " Defence " that " he took all opportunities of
supplying such courses as he could get in his cathedral."
But it is useless to multiply cases. The pulpit of a
noble old cathedral, whose aisles are filled with the various
attendants that a large city contributes, may be made as
true a centre for missionary work by a preaching bishop
as any other spot in the kingdom: and though, of course,
the real inspiration is to be drawn from a higher source,
still, he cannot but find that vaulted roof and columned
choir may help to elevate and enhance the great theme,
and are aids to effect which a Chrysostom, an Augustine,
or a Basil would not reject. I am sure no bishop would

134 The Church-Goer.
willingly set the public an example of regarding with in
difference, much less dislike, the cathedrals of the
country ; but by standing aloof from them a prelate may
inadvertently seem to treat with neglect or repugnance
these fine old mother churches, which are the ornaments
of the ceuntry, and may be made the strength and glory
of the Establishment. I therefore hope, whoever may be
the next bishop, that he will not only be a preaching
bishop for the parish and district churches of the diocese,
like Dr. Baring, but a preaching bishop for its cathedral
also, so that the old throne may again have its rightful
tenant, and the pulpit its fitting occupant.

§r. Scaring, ibt iefo §is{j0rr, at St. $att(}ias.*
ST. MATTHIAS is one of the new churches of Bristol,
which, raised during the last few years amongst the
populous outskirts that margin our older city, serve so
to speak, as outposts to those groups of sacred edifices
whose ancient towers are seen piercing the sky in the
centre of it. Within the town walls, our forefathers
crowded together places of worship, but once you passed
the gates of the old burgh, you traversed long tracts
without meeting a church ; the steeples of St. Peter and
St. Phdip's passed, the traveller had some way to go
beyond the suburbs ere he got sight of another. And
though it is long since population first overflowed the
civic boundaries, it is only within comparatively a few
years that steps were taken to meet tbe demand for in
creased church accommodation. Now, however, " as the
bird flies," it may alight on a succession of new churches,
from St. Matthew's, Kingsdown, to St. Luke's, at the
Cotton Works, which, I trust, will prove like a line of
fortresses for the repression of ignorance and sin. St.
Matthias is built upon what, until the erection of the
church and the adjoining baths and washhouses, was a
waste open space, only one part of which — that where the
ropemaker walked and worked through his daily task —
was devoted to any kind of industry. The rest was the
resort of the idle or the dissolute and the scene of un
hallowed pastime. Already has a great change in the
moral and local aspect of the spot taken place. The
houses on both sides the Frome — which here, crossed by a
* Dr. Baring succeeded Dr. Monk in the See of Gloucester and
Bristol, in 1856. He was translated, in 1861, to Durham, which he
resigned, and died not long after his retirement.
135

136 The Church-Goer.
narrow footbridge, ripples over loose stones and broken
crockery, with old rags instead of silk-weed adhering to
the bottom and waving in the current — are as poor and
almost as dilapidated as ever ; yet those who remember the
area once cumbered with rubbish and haunted by idlers,
must confess that the broad gravelled road, with hand
some Gothic church and schools bounding it on the north,
as the river does on the south, is a strong and striking
contrast to the former aspect of things in that quarter.
When the ancient Castle, whose ditch the river here fills
and whose outlines on this side are still traceable, was yet
unrazed, the guard upon its battlement looked down upon
the ropewalk ; and when the old massive towers were
removed, and ordinary tenements sprung np on their site,
this portion of the ground, which was probably kept open
in front of the fortress for strategical purposes, came to
be a sort of " no man's land," a common for the idle and
dissolute ; until another stronghold, where the Word of
God and not the weapons of man are used, was raised
upon the spot upon which the shadow of the old Castle
keep formerly fell.
Such was the neighbourhood in which the new bishop
(Baring) preached his inaugural sermon in Bristol. The
episcopal voice was not heard for the first time under the
cope of the cathedral, or from the pulpit of any one of
our ancient city churches ; but in one of the latest erected,
and in a quarter girdled by the habitations of the poor
and ^ he labouring classes. A few minutes before the
serv'ce and while the bell was still ringing, a fly drove
up to the schoolroom close by, and out of it stepped a
man in canonicals, about the middle height, thin, a little"
stooped at the shoulders, and apparently in delicate
health. His hair is greyer than his years would seem to
justify, for I believe he has not quite completed his half-
century, and there is an evidence of thought, without
austerity, in his countenance. He wears no wig, but is,
nevertheless, a bishop — " cucullus non facit monachum"
— and the little crowd round the schoolroom door, whose
heads the flags thrust out of the Gothic window in festive
array nearly touch, catch sight of the lawn sleeves, and
recognise his lordship.

Dr. Baring, the New Bishop, at St. Matthias. 137
What strikes one throughout in the manner of Dr.
Baring — his walk, his voice, his very preaching — is his
plain, unaffected, natural character ; without a particle
that is undignified — the easy, simple, affable manner of a
sensible gentleman, with no oppressive condescension or
pretentious humility any more than pride. Some one,
who had more magnificent episcopal models in his eye,
said he "was not a bit like a bishop." Like Burns's de
scription of Lord Daer, —
" The feint a pride, nae pride had he,
Nor sauce, nor state that I could see,
Mair than an honest ploughman."
His sermon was Hke himself, and yon might have heard
it from any respectable clergyman in any parish church
in England, and not been surprised. It was plain, to the
purpose, without a single effort at eloquence, or attempt
at ornament. He sat at the communion table until the
time for the sermon, when no one appearing to open the
little door in the iron railing, he did so himself, and
walked up into the pulpit in a way very unlike that in
which " The majesty of buried Denmark was wont to walk."
Indeed, tbe church authorities seemed so far to enter into
his lordship's indisposition to ceremony, that they let
him do everything for himself — find his way into the
church, find his way up into the pulpit, and find his way
ont of the church, almost by and for himself, as best he
could. I thought that some other prelates would have
resented a reception so much after the fashion of laissez
faire as this. But it seemed quite to suit his Lordship,
who is not above doing anything for himself, and who, to
all appearances, is a man more for work than show.
As an act and instance characteristic of his lordship,
I understand that, a few days ago, he arrived by train
at a place where he had to meet some of his clergy. On
alighting at the station, he found it crowded by a number
of his reverend brethren who came by the same train,
and who were not a little surprised to see their new dio
cesan alight from a fcarriage, unaccompanied by any office-

138 The Church-Goer.
bearer, and proceed down the platform, tugging along a
heavy carpet-bag. A curate, who was shocked to see a
successor of Hooper carrying his own luggage, advanced,
and offered to bear the bag; but his lordship thanked
him, and said he was able to manage it himself. The
curate retired; and an old incumbent ventured to hint to
the right rev. traveller that it was hardly the thing for
a bishop to be his own porter ; but Dr. Baring answered
that he carried his own carpet-bag before he was a bishop,
and didn't see why he shouldn't do the same still. So he
had his own way, got into a fly which was hardly rain
tight, and drove off to his destination, in a manner to
surprise those who were never in the habit of seeing a
prelate riding in any other than a carriage1 eight cubits
high, studded with brass mitres, and surmounted by
purple liveries.
The text was, " The sword of the Lord and of Gideon."
Though Sterne said that, " for a text ' Cappadocia, Pontus,
and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia' was as good as any
in the Bible," from a curt and pithy one you expect a
pointed discpurse ; but it was not so in the present
instance. It was a good, sound, earnest sermon — excel
lent, evangelical, urgent ; but, regarded intellectually or
in a literary light, remarkable in no respect. Yet, I am
strongly inclined to think, tbe plain, inornate discourse,
free from rhetorical effort, controversial allusion or per
sonal reference; like this, was just the sermon that it be
came a bishop, on such an occasion, in a district church
in a poor locality, arid coming for the first time amongst
us, to preach. As for fanciful pulpit eloquerice, it may
be doubted whether in bishop, priest, or deacon, it is the
agent that can be made most mighty in the conversion of
sinners. Hear how the muscular and vehement South
speaks of this school of pulpit orators, pointing his stric
tures by reference even to his own figurative and illus
trious contemporary, Jeremy Taylor : " 'I speak the words
of soberness,' said St. Paul, and I preach the gospel, not
with the ' enticing words of man's wisdom.' This was the
way of the apostle's discoursing of things sacred. No
thing here of the 'fringes of the north star'; nothing of
'the down of angels' wings, or the beautiful locks of

Dr. Baring, the New Bishop, at St. Matthias. 139
cherubims ' ; no starched similitudes introduced with a
' Thus have I seen a cloud rolling in its airy mansion,'
and the like. No ; these were sublimities above the rise
of the apostolic spirit. For the apostles, poor mortals,
were content to take lower steps, and to tell the world in
plain terms, that he whe believed sbeuld be saved, and
that he who believed not should be damned. And this was
the dialect which pierced the conscience, and made the
hearers cry out, ' Men and brethren, what shall we do ? '
It tickled not the ear, but sank into the heart ; and when
men came from snch sermons, they never commended the
preacher for his taking voice or gesture, for the fineness
of such a simile, or the quaintness of such a sentence, but
they spoke like men conquered with the overpowering
force and evidence of the most concerning truths, much in
the words of the two disciples going to Emmaus — ' Did not
our hearts burn icithin us while He opened to us the Scrip
tures ?' In a word, the apostles' preaching was therefore
mighty and successful, because plain, natural, and fami
liar, and by no means above the capacity of their hearers,
nothing being more preposterous than for those who were
professedly aiming at men's hearts, to miss the mark by
shooting over their heads." Though James the First
was fond of associating style and personal appearance,
he complimented Heaton, Bishop of Ely; who was a very
stout man, by saying, " Fat men, my lord, are apt to make
lean sermons ; yours, however, are not lean, but larded
with good learning." I am not partial to this standard
of criticism ; still, the sermon which Dr. Baring preached
was just what you would have expected from him —
a sensible and unaffected looking man; he preached an
earnest and unaffected discourse.

% (Eflmbatifoe Colonial §is|wp.
AFTER the meeting of the Pan-Anglican Synod in
England, in 1867, a number of the foreign and
colonial bishops who attended it visited the provinces
and preached in many of the churches. Thus, the same
Sunday, the Bishops of Labuan, Ontario, and Alabama
appeared in Bristol suburban pulpits. Dr. Macdougal, of
Borneo, prelate of the first-named diocese, was the most
notable of the three, and the following is a sketch of him
as he appeared to one who attended St. Mary Magdalene
(Sneyd Park) on the day : —
" Oh, it's only a colonial bishop," is a very constant
and rather contemptuous exclamation of people, when the
chief pastor of a far-distant diocese is announced. But, so
far as externals go, a colonial prelate looks quite as im
posing as one of our own spiritual peers. They take the
same amount of lawn, and deliver a benediction with the
same sonorous dignity. It is true that when at home they
have to dispense with purple liveries, and occasionally
have to cook their own dinner, and put up with a palace
made of mud and bamboo-wattles. Sydney Smith said
what Ireland required were gig bishops — Right Rev.
Fathers who were prepared to start at a moment's notice,
and travel expeditiously in the first light conveyance that
offered, instead of waiting for a commodious double coach,
with a pair of fat black steeds, to be ordered round to the
front door. The colonial bishops might be called Canoe
bishops — each prepared to paddle his own from one part
of a diocese to another ; and, when a coracle could not be
found, to tie his clothes in a bundle over his head and
swim a river, followed by a couple of his chaplains
similarly non-equipped, in order to hold a visitation or
UO

A Combative Colonial Bishop. 141
consecrate a church. It is tc be hoped that these occa
sional visits to luxurious Europe will not un-harden them
— that England will not prove a religious Capua to those
spiritual warfarers, and that they do not return to their
distant dioceses with an effeminate fancy for four courses
and feather beds.
Occasionally the Right Rev. Father in the Colonies is
called upon to do a bit of fighting. My Lord Bishop of
Labuan's fame as a pirate-killer preceded him to Bristol,
and made him the most popular of our three recent
episcopal visitors. The scene of his labours is in
Borneo, in the Indian archipelago, where sea-robbers and
rovers are only too plenty ; and any one who settles
amongst them must be prepared to hold his own when
hard blows are going, or some fine morning (as Sir Boyle
Roche said) awake and find bis throat cut. Dr. Mac-
dougal, originally trained to the profession of a surgeon,
I believe, went out in the capacity of missionary or mili
tary chaplain to the famous Rajah Brooke of Sarawak,
and being found to be the right man in the right place,
was made bishop of these dark and desperate regions. It
was whilst so engaged that he and others had to fight for
their lives against an attack of fanatic and bloodthirsty
barbarians ; and as they could not but choose to be killed
or kill, I am not surprised that they adopted the latter
alternative. In a terrific encounter, when the odd* were
greatly against the Europeans, the bishop signalised him
self by the determination and success with which he plied
his rifle. The Becord at the time read his lordship some
solemn sermons on the subject ; but I do not see what
else he was to do under circumstances which made even
a Quaker lustily lay about him with a handspike. I
believe, however, in the account which the right reverend
combatant gave of the affair, he betrayed a dash of " the
old man Adam " in the gusto with which he described
the scene, and the critical notice which he took in the
height of the melee of the range of his own rifle, which
pleased him in every particular, but the tendency which
it had " to grow hot after the sixteenth or seventeenth
shot." The religious paper seemed to think that his
lordship rather liked the work than otherwise ; but it is

142 The Church-Goer.
not fair to coldly criticise each mood of man or bishop
when he has a Minie rifle in his hand, and a murderous
band of Malay pirates before him. Besides, Dr. Mac-
dougal was always a muscular Christian. For was he
not one of tbe famous seven who pulled the Oxford boat
in 1840 or '41 against the Cambridge eight, and beat
them ? Wherever or in whatever part of the globe any
one of this renowned Septem happens to be — be his lot
cast in the rosy Orient or the remote Occident, in hyper
borean or antipodean regions — he is sure to be renowned
so long as there is a member of either of our great Uni
versities to tell the story. He may be a profound divine
or an eloquent advocate, a sagacious governor or a bold
soldier ; but everything else pales before tbe fact that he
was one of the Oxford Seven. It was to be expected, then,
that a man who pulled se good an oar should handle a
grooved barrel with slaughterous effect. And if it was a
question whether he was io kill Borneo savages or Borneo
savages were to kill him, I say with the enthusiastic
Irishman, "More power to his lordship's elbow! "
He certainly looked, as I saw him on Sunday last at St.
Mary Magdalene, Stoke Bishop, like a man who could
not be taken even by pirates unawares. Indeed, he
would not himself have made a bad picture of a corsair
or bold rover of the seas, run a little to flesh. His wras
no student's face. It was alike a contrast to the pale
delicacy of Ellicott, the placid expanse of Monk, or the
reserved thoughtfulness of dark Thomson. Bronzed and
black-bearded almost to his keen and resolute eyes, he
quite met your ideal of the man you expected to see.
And there were plenty there to see him. He evidently
" drew " better than either of his episcopal brethren. His
fame had gone before him, and many flocked out from
Bristol to hear him. On my way across the Down I met
an acquaintance whom I invited to join me. He was
bound for another (and it is fair to state his own) church,
and declined. He should like very much, however, he
said, "to hear the bishop that shot the pirates" (you see
it was rather the slaughtering than theological powers of
his lordship that took my friend's fancy). " Ontario he
knew nothing of, and to Alabama he had a special objec-

A Combative Colonial Bishop. 143
tion, as tending to remind us of those confounded claims
which still hang over our heads, and threaten some day
or other to double our income tax. But the truth was,"
my acquaintance added, " Michaelmas day was no day to
hear a pulpit don ; pulpit dons generally made long dis
courses," he said, " and when a pulpit discourse ran a
quarter of an hour or twenty minutes beyond the usual
time, it "was impossible for ordinary flesh and blood to
devote that attention to the preacher which he should
like to do ; and which, conscious that all this time a fine
goose was spoding before the fire, he could not do. No,
thank you," he added ; " I shall proceed to my own parish
church, for my cook can go by our incumbent's sermon as
safely as she can by tbe kitchen clock. Both are right to
tbe minute."
There was something very practical, after all, in this,
and I began to think our foreign and colonial bishops
were not fortunate in their choice of a Sunday, when it
fell upon the festival of St. Michael and all Angels.
His sermon was frank and unexaggerated. He did not
string a number of illustrative anecdotes together, but
made a plain unvarnished statement of what he thought
on the subject, founded on what he himself saw. He
treated the topic very much in the spirit of a man of the
world, as well as a missionary ; and, referring dispassion
ately to what some old Indian residents had said in dis
paragement of the work, he tolerantly admitted that their
opinions might have been influenced by what they wit
nessed in their own localities, and, added the bishop,
" there are inefficient missionaries as there are inefficient
men in all departments." His candour inspired confi
dence in what he did say ; he was most liberal, too, in
allowing merit to other Christian denominations in the
missionary work ; and while the Dissenters got full credit
for their labours in Hindostan, the Spanish Roman Cath
olic Church was applauded for its success amongst the
population of the Manillas. Dr. Macdougal is a High
Churchman. That was plain enough, as he entered the
chancel of St. Mary Magdalene, and made an obeisance
towards the altar — a form which he had all to himself, as
the clergy unostentatiously took their places without

144 The Church-Goer.
following his example; though, I suppose, there is a limit
even to his lordship's ritualism, since I find him reported
in the Church Times as denouncing in St. Matthew's,
City Road, the substitution of " tbe biretta of the Italian
priest " for the academical cap — condemning " extrava
gant postures " and the adoption of the " scant vestment,"
instead of " the surplice with its graceful folds." How
ever, my sketch of the pirate-slaying prelate does not
propose to include the vexed question of sacerdotal man-
millinery, which it is beyond the reach of even one of the
Oxford " Seven " to settle.

ON A FEW OLD BRISTOL PRELATES.

(Llje ^le^mxj |lrotfjjei."

SOME years ago, I was spending a day in the quiet little
town of Bangor. To while away the time I paid a
visit to its cathedral, which had little to attract one in an
architectural point of view. The old verger, however,
brought me to the chapter-room, which was also a por
trait gallery of the past bishops of the See, and there I
was struck with the pleasure which might be derived by
the visitor to any of our old collegiate minsters, if such
collections were general. Earl Derby, as it is known,
suggested a National Portrait Gallery as a source of
popular instruction and interest. In a local point of view,
there is not a diocese in England that does not num
ber amongst its past bishops, and deans, many men
eminent for their talents, their personal history, their
scholarship, their writings, or even their sufferings,
whose pictures we would feel pleasure in contemplating ;
so that we might see what manner of men in countenance
and expression they were. With some clue to their charac
ter from their recorded acts and their books, it would be
an additional gratification to us to trace in their lineaments
their individual peculiarities and mental properties. S up-
posing we had, for instance, a gallery of this kind in
Bristol, in the fine old Norman room where our capitular
body meet, what gratification might we not derive from
ourselves seeing and showing to strangers, likenesses of
the profound Butler of the "Analogy," Newton of the
" Prophesies," Robinson, the diplomatist ; " the valiant
Cornishman," Trelawney ; and his co-confessor in the
Tower, Lake ; the student and powerful preacher, Cony
beare ; even the smoking Fletcher, and the mighty hunter,
145 [,

146' The Church-Goer.
Guy Oarleion; arid, above all, the pulpit orator, West-
field—" Tbe Weeping Prophet " ?
The last-named bishop it is whose popular designation
I have placed at the head of this paper. He was so
called, we are told, from his pathetic style, and it is further
recorded of him that he was so modest, or perhaps we
should rather Say so nervous, th&t he never entered the
pulpit without trembling. "He was a person of such
admirable modesty," says Walker, in his " Sufferings of
the Clergy," " that it is said he never ascended the pulpit,
even after he had been fifty years a preacher, without
trembling, and being once to preach before the king
(Charles I.) at Oxford, he fainted quite away, when that
excellent prince was contented patiently to wait till he
had recovered himself, and then had from him a sermon
which abundantly rewarded such a royal arid Christian
condescension. " Indeed, he was such an eloquent preacher
that Bishop King said he was " bern an pratpr."
It is probable, however, that this extraordinary timidity
orbashfulness arese as much from a constitutional weakness
as from a sense of humility. This peculiar shyness, this
shrinking from public position and prominence, was ex
hibited in an equally remarkable manner by an eminent
contemporary of the bishop, the Duke de Rochefoucauld,
the author of the famous " Reflexions et Maximes," who,
though so great a wit and profound an analyst of human
nature, was, we are told, never a member of the French
Academy, purely oh account of the absolute rule, which
required that any one accepting the honour should make
a public speech on the day »f his reception. For, though
a man of undoubted physical courage, as he proved in
many a hard-fought field, and especially at the battle of
St. Antoine, where he received a severe wound, the noble
philosopher and fighter was never capable of facing an
audience or repeating four lines in public without fainting.
Though Bishop Westfield was never a soldier, his lot was
cast in the troubled times of the Civil Wars, when he
proved himself a man of devotion, ready and willing, in
case he were called upon, to bear testimony with his life
to the truth of the principles which he professed. Indeed,
his existence was one of trial and suffering. In his epitaph,

" The Weeping Prophet." 147
written by himself, and which is now hardly legible on the
plain flat tombstone which covers his remains in the north
aisle of our cathedral, be speaks of himself as one "worn
out with age and grief"; and his devotion may be inferred
from the fact stated, upon good authority, that "he ac
cepted the bishopric in the worst of times, as hoping to do
some service for the church, though he refused the offer
of it which was made him above twenty years before."
In the beginning of the rebellion (Walker tells us), West-
field was abused in the streets, sequestered from St. Bar
tholomew the Great (which he held before his elevation
to a See), and forced to fly ; though it would seem his
character was so unexceptionable that, after the profits of
his bishopric had been detained from him for some time,
they were restored to him by a committee of the rebel
Parliament, who granted him a safe conduct to pass with
his family to Bristol, adding therein that he was of great
age, and a person of much learning and merit. The profits
of the bishopric, however, could have been but small, for
in his will he says, " As for my worldly goods (which as
the times now are, I know not well where they be or what
they are) I bequeath them," etc. This might have arisen
from the peculiar circumstances of his case, though the
see was a poor one at best ; for, in the reign but one pre
ceding, we are told Dr. Holdsworth refused it, alleging
that he would "have no Bristol stone," in allusion to the
native diamonds, for which St. Vincent's Rocks were even
then famed.
As I before observed, the title of " The Weeping Pro
phet " he obtained from his pathetic style. I am unable
to say, however, whether or not his sermons partook so
much of the character of the Lamentations as to justify
a designation which seems to have been derived from
Jeremiah. Wood tells us that, after his death, were
published of bis compositions " England's Face in Israel's
Glass," "Eight Sermons on Psalms cvi., xix., xx., etc,"
printed in 1646, qto., and they were published again, with
others added, amongst them " White Robe or Surplice
Vindicated," in several sermons, printed in 1663. I am
sorry I have not an opportunity of referring to these dis
courses, or possibly I might be able to select some passages

148 The Church-Goer.
characterised by the mournful and touching peculiarity
which obtained for him his title of " The Weeping Pro
phet." There was doubtless much in the times and troubles
amongst which he lived to give a mournful tone, a sad
hue, to the pulpit discourses of a man of his temperament.
The country in commotion ; laxity of life on the one hand,
savage Puritanism, on the other; fierce religious divisions ;
the king and his subjects in arms against one another —
all these were enough to make him cry out with the son
of Hilkiah, " Oh that my head were waters, and mine
eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night
for the slain of the daughters of my people."
We want no sermon of his, however, to show the apt
ness of what, I suppose, we may call his soubriquet. The
epitaph written by himself in Latin is one deep sigh — the
moan from beginning to end of |a broken and contrite
heart. " Here lies Thomas Westfield, S.T.P., tbe least of
bishops, the greatest of sinners, who died 25th of June,
1644, worn out with age and grief. Reader ! whoever you
are, farewell ! Repent ! " The visitor to Worcester Cathe
dral has doubtless seen the strange, inexplicable tomb
stone in the cloisters which bears upon it the sole and
short inscription, " Miserrimus." There is, however, nothing
of the grim and lonely hopelessness, or it may be misan
thropy, conveyed by this single word, to be inferred from
tbe epitaph which we are told Bishop Westfield, while still
living, dictated for himself. It seems to have been sug
gested by the deepest humility, though there is, with all
its sadness, a certain epigrammatic point, an antithetical
neatness about one passage which would evoke a suspicion
of pedantry on the part of the writer, did we not know
that in those days even the most pious pulpit orators were
accustomed to turn sentences so as to produce pointed
effects, and the scholarly habits of the divine during life
could not be expected wholly to leave him on tbe approach
of death. Even the Weeping Prophet must have felt that
he had produced a fine antithesis when he wrote "Episco
porum infimus, peccatorum primus" — a passage which we
hardly render with all its force and finish even when we
translate it "The least of bishops, the greatest of sinners."

" The Weeping Prophet." 149
To the bishop's own words his widow added that the
epitaph was dictated by himself (epitaphium ipse dictavit
sibi vivus), and that the mcnument was erected "to the
dearest of husbands by the most disconsolate of wives,
Elizabeth Westfield." I have heard it said it would have
been better without this additipn ; but I really dp not see
how it could have been dispensed with. Its point and
pathos, too, consist in the fact that it was written by the
deceased prelate himself. He alone could with any pro
priety speak so of himself. The words which, coming
from him, were dictated by a pious sense of his own. un
worthiness, would, if placed there by another hand, have
been a false and unfeeling libel, so that it was necessary
to say they were his own, and, as such, his widow was
alone justified in having them inscribed upon his tpmb.
Dpes net the reader, therefere, participate with me in a
natural curiosity to know more of the personal history
and peculiarities of the " Weeping Prophet " and mourn
ful prelate of Bristol, whose humility and modesty were
such that he never entered the pulpit without trembling ?
If we had a portrait of him (and there may be one, for
aught I know to the contrary, hid away somewhere or
another), we might imagine his appearance as, with timid
and almost faltering step, he emerged from the choir door
and crossed the flagged nave or ante- choir, to that stone
pulpit by the pillar on the north side, which one of his
predecessors in the See, Dr. Robert Wright, had presented
to the cathedral some twenty years before. The old
stone pulpit has disappeared with recent alterations, but
most of ns can remember it, and picture to ourselves, if
we please, the nervous prelate, having slowly ascended it,
opening with trembling hand his sermon, and pressing the
paper into form on the velvet cushion before him. Oh !
what a sermon we may imagine this born orator, as Bishop
King called him, and most pathetic of preachers, deliver
ing on the touching words, " 0 Jerusalem, Jerusalem,
thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are
sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy
children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens
under her wings, and ye would not ! " There is a happy
illustration of what pulpit oratory ought to be in an essay

150 The Church-Goer.
by Henry Rogers on the subject. " True eloquence," he
says, " is not like some painted window, which both trans
mits the light of day variegated and tinged with a thou
sand hues, and diverts the attention from its proper use
to the pomp and splendour of the artist's doings. It is a
perfectly transparent medium ; transmitting light, with
out suggesting a thought about the medium itself." Here,
however, the obvious humility of the man — all sense of
self-importance subdued and lost in the contemplation ef
the sublime subject, the greatargumentundercensideratien
— forbade the slightest suspicicn of egotism, and ought to
have shut out the remotest thought about tbe medium.
The " born orator," pressed down- by the weight of his
great responsibility, was lowly-minded as a mendicant,
abashed as a maiden.
We find the following meagre particulars of Westfield
in Wood (Ath. Oxon.) : — " He was a native of the parish
of St. Mary, in the city of Ely, was educated in gram-
maticals there, in academicals in Jesus' College, in the
said University, of which he was made successively scholar.
and fellow. Afterwards he became curate or assistant to
Dr. Nich. Felton, while he was minister of St. Mary-le-Bow,
in Cheapside, rector of Hornsey and of Great St. Bar
tholomew, in London, archdeacon of St. Albans, and at
length (in 1641) advanced to the See of Bristol, when
dying 25th June, 1644, he was buried in the cathedral,
at the upper end of the aisle joyning on the north side."

She Smoking §is{jErj}.
SHOWING the local lions to a stranger, we visited
the cloisters of Bristol Cathedral amongst the other
notable spots, nooks, and corners of the old city. I was
no sooner within the arcaded quadrangle than my olfactory
senses became aware of the presence of a pipe somewhere
inside the capitular precincts, and almost immediately
an old fellow, like a military pensioner, ¦ emerged from
the dark colonnade with a short piece of clay between
his lips.
" This was a perfume," said my friend, " unknown to
these old archways in monkish times." So it was ; for as
the narcotic weed was not imported until after the Re
formation, the Black Canons of St. Augustine could not
of course have indulged in it. "Yet," I said, "it is very
probable that these same cloisters have been paced by
a bishop similarly engaged as our neighbour the pensioner
yonder." Dr. Fletcher, who, under Queen Elizabeth,
filled the See of Bristol, was so attached to the newly
discovered Virginian plant that, according to Sir John
Harrington and other ancient authorities, he died from
the excessive use of it. Fletcher was Dean of Peter
borough when Mary, Queen of Scots, was beheaded at
Fotheringay Castle, and his attendance upon that un
happy sovereign, if of no advantage to her, was of some
profit to himself, as he was rewarded with a bishopric.
Whde at Bristol, I cannot imagine any place more likely
to have been made his smoking walk than these same
cloisters. Tbe palace which he inhabited opened into
them ; they afforded shelter and air, and the antique
dreamy repose of the spot must have seconded the sooth
ing influence of the " weed." It is therefore, I am
sure, no unwarrantable inference from facts to conclude
151

152 The Church-Goer.
that Fletcher sent forth many a puff from his episcopal
lips in this very walk, pacing up and down under these
old Gothic archings, and marking the progress of many a
morning and evening promenade by the little thin line of
blue vapour that fpllpwed his footsteps. His end, as
related by the gossiping retailer of " Old Trifles," excites
a smile as well as a sigh. Fletcher was translated, I
think, to Worcester from Bristol ; but here the queen's
favour failed him, for, having married a second wife, one
Lady Baker, the " fair Vesta] crowned in the West " took
umbrage at it ; as folks were not then sufficiently re
moved from Popish times and clerical celibacy to think
complacently of a bishop entering twice upon the nuptial
state. Elizabeth very probably thought that if she could
do all her life without a husband, a grave prelate might
be content with being the partner of one wife during his
episcopal career. So she looked black upon Fletcher, who
had the double mortification of finding that he had lost
the royal countenance and his own comfort by the same
act ; for if contemporary gossip be correct, the said Lady
Baker must have been a bit of a shrew, and made the
solacing effect of a " sweet Broseley " all the more welcome
to her right reverend partner. " Fletcher," says Camden,
"was a consummate courtier, who, endeavouring to smother
the cares of an unlucky match in the smoke of tobacco,
which he took to excess, and falling under the queen's
displeasure (who thought it enough for bishops to be
fathers of the Church), between the experiment and the
misfortune, lost his life." This, however, is not Harring
ton's version of the bishop's death ; for he intimates that
he expired partly from transport and partly from tobacco,
on the day that he was honoured by a royal visit of
reconciliation. " The queen being pacified," writes Sir
John, in his " Nugai Antiques," "and the bishop in great
jollity with his fayre ladye, and her carpets, and her
cushions, in her bedchambre, dyed soddainely, taking
tobacco in his chayre, saying to his man that stoode by
him, whom he loved very well, ' Oh, boy, I die ! ' and
incontinently he dyed." From this it will be seen that
Fletcher had a good idea of a comfortable smoke, though
whether it was exactly polite in him to take his pipe into

The Smoking Bishop. 153
my ladye's chamber, leaving a strong aroma of tobacco
on her luxurious carpets and cushions, is a question which
I must commend to those good wives who will not allow
their husbands to light a cigar within the four walls of
their dwellings, to say nothing of so inappropriate a place
for such a purpose as their sleeping apartment. That
Lady Baker Fletcher should permit her husband to do so
is, I think, a tolerably good proof that she was not of
that fierce and torrid temper which is attributed to her.
Sir Isaac Newton's sweetheart, whose little finger he
inadvertently used to clear his pipe with, could hardly
have acted with more complacency towards her " cloud
compelling" suitor.
Talking of tobacco and monasteries, one is tempted to
speculate whether, if the narcotic plant had been known
in England before the Reformation, it would have had an
evil or advantageous effect upon abbatical life. It might
have induced greater idleness, or it might have been for
bidden, though snuff is a favourite with friars and priests ;
but had it been earlier known, and allowed in the cloisters,
I expect ecclesiastical literature would have savoured
strongly of it. What poetic pictures would have formed
themselves in the grey clouds that, evening and morning,
might be puffed forth around these old buildings ! what
day-dreams might have been nourished by the pipe, far
surpassing the quaint marvels of saintly legends.
Another tribute has been added to the many in
favour of tobacco. We learn from the account of the
combat at Aspromonte, that when, foiled and wounded,
Garibaldi, in great pain, was laid under a tree, he
" lighted a cigar and smoked," though the fire of Palla-
vicino's Bersaglieri was being sharply delivered. Dis
appointed, broken-hearted, bleeding — when friends and
foes seemed equally leagued against him, and the banner
of " Rome or Death!" which he raised was trodden down,
his last faithful friend and comforter left was a mild
Havannah ! And then, when his wounds were being
examined, " he bade them apply cold water, and all the
time he smoked with great calmness and firmness."
After this, well may we say with Lord Byron, " Sublime
tobacco ! "

t ^mbassabor ^is^op of Bristol.
THERE have been diplomatic bishops, and even fight
ing bishops not a few in the world. Both in England
and France, cardinals have administered public affairs
and mitred heads been seen in the thick of the battle.
When the Bishop of Beauvais, who took up arms against
his monarch, was made prisoner by the latter, the Pope
claimed the pugnacious prelate from his captor, asserting
him to be " a son of the Church " : upon which the king
sent to his Holiness the coat of mail in which the bishop
was clad when taken, and posed the Sovereign Pontiff
with the words of the 32nd verse of the 37th chapter of
Genesis, " This have we found : know now whether it be
thy son's coat or not." Bishop Polk, who was killed in
his capacity of Confederate General, was originally edu
cated at West Point for the military profession, and still
held his episcopal post while commanding a division ;
while Bishop Monrad, the prime minister of the King of
Denmark during the disastrous Sleswig-Holstein war, re
signed at the request of his Majesty, to make way for a
more peaceable premier.
All these, however, might be considered exceptional
cases. Dr. John Robinson is a comparatively modern
instance of a bishop having the practical duties of a See
to discharge, while still acting as representative in a con
ference for the preparation of one of the most important
and difficult treaties which this country has taken part
in — namely, that of Utrecht; and must always stand out as
a striking incident in our local prelatic annals. Save and
except his absence in Holland during the critical confer
ence referred to, this diplomatic divine resided amongst us,
and we have every reason to suppose took a lively inter-

The Ambassador Bishop of Bristol. 155
est in the affairs of our old city, from the year 1710, when
he was appointed to the See, to 1714, when he was trans
lated to London. A manuscript of the date 1715 gives
ns a good idea of his lordship's personal appearance.
" He is a little brown man," says the gossiping recorder ;
" of a grave and venerable countenance ; very charitable
and good-humoured ; strictly religious himself, and takes
care to make others so ; is very careful in whatever he
"undertakes. Divinity and policy have pretty equally
divided his time ; and as few, if any, have made a better
progress in either of them, so he cannot but be always an
ornament as well as an advantage to his country. About
sixty years old."
This is not a bad daguerreotype ; and as the little good-
humoured brown bishop was residing in the palace in
Lower College Green, when Edward Colston, the philan
thropist, represented Bristol (in conjunction with Joseph
Earle), it is no violent stretch of the imagination to
suppose that they occasionally met, when the truly
honourable member visited his native city to see how his
Hospitals were going on, or to preside at the annual
dinner of the Leyal Spciety, and keep up his acquaintance
with his old friends and constituents. We can almost
picture in our mind's eye the pleasant and venerable-
faced little bishop, upon whose active, well-knit frame
sixty summers have had no damaging effect, stopping as
he crosses the Green to gossip with some leading citizen,
and exchange the " civility of snuff-boxes." I have no
authority for saying that the little divine took snuff ; but
as we learn from the late Lord Malmesbury that the
qualifications of a good diplomatist are very simple —
" Always keep your back to the light, and learn to take
snuff " — I presume so accomplished a politician as the
bishop neglected neither point. The year in which Dr.
Robinson came to Bristol, cross rows of limes were being
planted in Queen Square, and the year in which he left it
for London, Farley's Journal, the first important newspaper
printed in the city, was started. For an idea of the old
town generally I turn to a picturesque street view of that
period, or nearly so, in Mr. S. G. Tovey's excellently
written " Memoirs of Colston " : — " We are before the

156 The Church-Goer.
Tolzey. There is the High Cross, painted and gilded,
with its statues of royal benefactors to tbe city. Above
a long arcade rises a little Christ Church, with tapering
spire, and a clock in the tower, guarded by gigantic
' Quarter Boys,' with ever-ready hammers to note the flight
of time. Beneath the arcade the Corporation's officers are
lounging — marshals, in long gowns, with the city arms
on their staves : sheriff's yeomen in their municipal cos
tume, with basket-hilted swords and daggers. Pass and
repass stately dames and portly aldermen, real knights,
sumptuously apparelled, tenacious of their dignity ; ser
vants in gaudy liveries ; substantial tradesmen, in sober
garb, humble citizens, rough labourers, and translators in
' rugged coats of frieze,' gilded carriages, trucks drawn by
dogs, drays laden with rich merchandize, ' Bristol mdk '
and sugar ; moving to and fro, we imagine them — vaguely
as in a dream — shifting, changing, disappearing."
Just insert in the sketch with a light pencil the figure
of " a little brown man," with a venerable, good-humoured
countenance, clad in the out-of-door episcopal dress of the
period, and you may frame the picture, and hang it up as
a pretty and characteristic memorial of old Bristol.
Dr. John Robinson— the subject of my notice — was
born at Cleasby, in Yorkshire, on the 7th of November,
1650, and educated at Brasenose College, Oxford, where
he graduated B.A., in 1673, subsequently becoming
Fellow of Oriel, and graduating M.A., 1683. In the same
year he took orders, and went abroad as domestic chap
lain to tbe British Ambassador at the Court of Sweden,
and thus it was, no doubt, that he came to be associated
with diplomacy, for which he must have quickly shown a
talent, for in the absence of the minister, a year or two
afterwards, he was appointed, first, Resident, and then
Envoy Extraordinary.
In the Clarendon and Rochester correspondence is a
letter from John Robinson, Envoy in Sweden (no doubt
the subsequent bishop), March, 1685, to Lord Rochester,
First Lord of the Treasury, in which the writer asks
" pardon for the unseasonable solicitation which my ne
cessities force me to, being reduced at present to such
circumstances as I can only be relieved in by your lord-

The Ambassador Bishop of Bristol. 157
ship. For I am now, in pursuance of a revocation from
his late Majesty (Charles II.) , preparing to return home ;
but of necessity am forced to delay it till I hear of money
to defray the debts I have contracted, which, in above
two years' time, amount to a very great sum ; so that,
though £600, which was ordered me before his late Ma
jesty's death, should be paid, as I have reason to hope
from your lordship's goodness, yet I must profess that is
so made over to Mr. Alderman Jefferys and other credi
tors in England that I cannot expect any part of it will
reach me here." He then asks for a further supply of
three or four hundred peunds.
Either Rebinspn must have been extravagant at ccllege
or of poor parents, to have so involved himself in debt, as
is evident from this epistle. Be this, however, as it may,
he does not seem to have then returned to England ; or,
if he did, it was only for a short time, or to receive the
appointment of ambassador, in which elevated rank be
continued to reside in Stockholm until 1708. On quit
ting this post, and coming home, he was made Dean of
Windsor, and in 1710 (four years before the death of
Queen Anne), Bishop of Bristol. In the west window —
a poor memorial enough — he has " left his mark " upon
our old cathedral, and his arms may still be traced upon
its glass. There is beneath the shield an inscription in
Runic characters, which sounds thus, " Madr er moldur
auki," and signifies, " Man is but a heap of mouldering
dust," * a solemn sentence (probably picked up during his
residence in Sweden) of which he seems to have been
very fond, as he also inscribed it on the front of an addi
tional wing which he built to Oriel College, in 1719, on
the east side of the garden. To this college he was a
considerable benefactor, having also left £2,500 to aug
ment the fellowships and found three exhibitions.
Amongst his other acts of munificence he built and en
dowed a chapel and school at Cleasby, bis native place.
In the commission for the treaty of Utrecht, Bishop
Robinson was entrusted with the department of trade, in
place of Prior (the poet), because Lord Stafford, our
* The poor west window here referred to disappeared with the
erection of the new nave.

158 The Church-Goer.
Ambassador at the Hague, who was in the Commission,
refused to be joined with a person of low birth like
Prior. _ It was no formal work that was cut out for our good
bishop at Utrecht. Queen Anne wished to terminate a
war carried on, however brilliantly, still with no little
hardship to her subjects, with Louis the Fourteenth of
France, and the latter, exhausted and weary of fighting,
was still more anxious to put an end to the ruinous con
flict. But the German Emperor and their High Mighti
nesses of Holland, who were the chief gainers by the
struggle— England, as usual, paying the piper for her
continental allies— did all in their power to thwart the
peaceable intentions of the two principal belligerents, and
it was only by firmness and address, and acting with de
cisive frankness towards her interested friends, that
Britain could succeed, and did succeed, in the Conference.
Though Swift, speaking of the two English plenipoten
tiaries, says, " they are both long practised in business
but neither of them of much parts," there is no reason to
doubt that our little "brown" bishop acquitted himself
very well on the occasion. It is true that the authors
ot that treaty were fiercely attacked by the Whigs in
the following reign, when George the First ascended the
throne ; but the same contemporary MS., from which we
have already quoted, observes: "As he followed his in
structions and obeyed his mistress' orders, it is some
surprise to tbe considering part of the world how this
gentleman can be called to account for the doing that
which bad he not done it, would have more endangered
both his life and reputation. If to be dutiful and
obedient is treason, they have a good article against him ;
their fw0"1* M t0 b6 h°Ped tMs Sentleman wil1 escaPe
His appointment to a place in the Privy Council, which
preceded his nomination as one of the two plenipoten
tiaries at Utrecht, gave great satisfaction to the clerical
interest, whose esprit de corps was flattered by one of their
order being made a partner in state affairs. " When I
went out this morning," says Swift, in his journal to
Stella, Aug. 30, 1711, "I was surprised with the news

The Ambassador Bishop of Bristol. 159
that the Bishop of Bristol is made Lord Privy Seal. You
know his name is Robinson, and that he was many years
envoy in Sweden. All tbe friends of the ministry are
extreme glad, and tbe clergy above the rest. The
Whigs will fret to death te see a civil emplcyment given
to a clergyman. It was a very handsome thing in my
Lord Treasurer, and will bind the Church to him for
ever." The Earl of Oxford would seem to have been his
staunch patron. " As he (Robinson) is so excellent a
statesman as well as a divine," says a contemporary au-
thoritys " he was not a little consulted by the earl, who,
finding his capacity so great and his knowledge so gen
eral, resolved to have him of the Privy Council, where he
was of so much service, and made so venerable a figure,
that her Majesty (who, we are elsewhere told, had such
an esteem for him that, had she outlived the Archbishop
of Canterbury, she would certainly have made him an
archbishop) chose him for one of her plenipotentiaries
at the treaty of Utrecht." So that, small as the Bishop
of Bristol was in stature, he must have been of a very
impressive appearance, since his venerable figure was one
of his qualifications, which Lord Malmesbury should have
added to that of taking snuff and sitting with one's back
to the light.
However, his lordship had much natural astuteness
which stood him well in the " keen encounter of (diplo
matic) wits," and there is a story of his cautious fore
sight, which, though in a small way, illustrates this quality.
The bishop sent a message of remonstrance to Edmund
Curll, tbe bookseller, who was about to publish an edition
of Rochester's poems. Curll offered to send an inter
leaved copy to the bishop, who might strike out what he
pleased, and the book should be reprinted conformably to
his lordship's opinion. Mr. Hoare, son of Sir Richard
Hoare, brought Curll's message. The bishop smiled and
said : " Sir, I am told that Mr. Curll is a shrewd man,
and should I revise the book you have brought me, he
would publish it as approved by me."
Catch a weasel or diplomat asleep ! Like not a few
others of the Episcopal Bench, the bishop was no follower

160 The Church-Goer.
of Whiston, the monogamist ; for he had two wives, of
course not together. His first was Maria, daughter of
Wm. Langton, whom he has commemorated in an in
scription on the buildings erected by him at Oriel College,
and his second was a certain Emma, of parentage un
known, who survived him twenty-five years.
The bishop died at Hampstead of an asthmatic dis
order, April, 1723, and was buried at Fulham.
Revising this part of our episcopal annals, one naturally
asks who was attending to the affairs of the diocese while
its diplomatic bishop was abroad, attending to the affairs
of Europe ? While his lordship was dealing with king
doms, it would have been useless to write to him about
parishes. When Edmund Burke was representative for
this city, and thundering away against the French Revo
lution, be complained, in a private letter to a friend, that,
" while he was combating the great political antichrist,
the Bristolians were pestering him about a herring
fishery." It is probable that the good bishop would have
taken more patiently a memorial from tbe vestry of St.
Philip's, or a complaint from the curate of St. John's,
if he found them in his despatch-bag any morning at
Utrecht, but I question if, after a long tussle with their
High Mightinesses, he would be in a fitting frame of
mind to reply to his Bristol correspondents. At that
time a Bristol bishop was usually resident, and a familiar
figure daily in our streets, so that the citizens must have
been content to place the honour done the See against the
temporary loss and pleasure of his company and counsel.
I suppose he did not stick up on the old palace door
down in the Lower Green, during his absence, " Gone to
Utrecht ; will be back when the affairs of England,
France, the Empire, and Holland are settled ; inquire of
the dean above " ; but in these days some such quizz
would, under the circumstances, have found its way into
the local papers.

" (Tbe Dunting ^isj)Ojj " of Bristol.
ri UY CARLETON, the hunting bishop of Bristol, is re-
\X called to my mind by a letter of his, which appears
in Malcolm's " Londinum Redivivum, " and which is copied
from the originalin the archives of St. Paul's. The curious
and characteristic epistle has been brought under my notice
by a friend, who has been making some researches in the
volnme in question. Carleton was bishop from 1671 to
1678, and the letter is dated "Feburary 5, 1676. " It is
in answer to the King's Commissioners, who had been
appointed by his Majesty, Charles II. , for the purpose of
procuring subscriptions towards tbe building of St. Paul's
Cathedral, London. They wrote to all the bishops to ask
them to contribute and procure what sums they could
towards the great work, the appeal being more pointedly
made to each prelate personally. Here is Guy's reply to
the application : —
"Rev. Sra, — On Saturday last, a letter from you came to my hand,
dated London, September 21st, 1676. It seems it came to Bristol
when I was in the North, and came then to Newcastle and Durham,
after I was come away from thence ; and at last, after a considerable
rest in the country, round again to Bristol. The business was to ask
my name to a contribution towards the rebuilding of St. Paul's church,
a great and good work, to which no man would more willingly put a
helping hand than myself, were I able, and in a capacity to do it ; but
indeed the bishoprick of Bristol is both so beggarly of itself, and hath
made me so likewise by being the bishop (who before I came to it was
in a condition to live without begging or borrowing), that unless his
Majestie pleases to allow some additional support, the dignity must
fall to the ground, and I with it.
" If God please that hereafter my condition may increase to answer
so good and pious a motive, it shall be most readily done, by, most
worthy sir, your very affectionate friend and brother, " Guy, Bristol."
Little more than two years after this Carleton was trans
it M

162 The Church-Goer.
lated to Chichester ; but whether his good fortune was
owing to his merits, or to the broad hint given in the fore
going epistle, I am not competent to say. We know upon
good authority, however (namely, that of Anthony Wood),
that with his improved fortune, there was no improvement
in Carleton's generosity; for the author of " Athence
Oxonienses" says, noticing Guy's promotion, "He had not
the name there (Chichester) for a scholar or liberal bene
factor, as his predecessor had."
Guy got the title of " The Hunting Prelate," I believe
literally from bis being a great rider across country, if not
during bis bishopric, before it; and it is just possible he
indirectly owed his mitre to his horsemanship. Though
born of an ancient and genteel family in Cumberland, his
parents would seem to have been in indifferent circum
stances. He was educated in tbe Free School at Carlisle,
and was afterwards admitted a poor serving child in
Queen's College, Oxford, at the age of seventeen years,
He subsequently became Fellow, and in 1635 was one of
the Proctors of the University, and Vicar of Bucklesbury,
Berkshire. " At length, upon the breaking out of the
Great Rebellion," says Wood, " he took part with his
Majesty, and did him good service, being then accounted
an excellent horseman in a double sense, for which
he had his share in sufferings as other Royalists had.
After the king's Restoration, he was made one of his
chaplains — was actually created D. of D., in the begin
ning of Aug., 1660, made Dean of Carlisle, in the place of
Dr. Thomas Comber, sometime Master of Trinity College
in Cambridge (some years before dead), and on the 2nd of
November, the same year, was installed Prebendary of
Durham. In 1671, he was nominated Bishop of Bristol,
on the death of Dr. Gilb. Ironside, to which See being
consecrated in S. Peter's Church, at Westm. On the
eleventh day of February, in the same year, had, much
about that time, liberty allowed him to keep his Prebend-
ship in commendam. In 1678, he was translated to Chi
chester, on the death of Dr. Brideoake. "
I cannot even guess at what Wood means when he says
Carleton " was an excellent horseman in o double sense; "
but the dry old chronicler has doubtless some sly, if not

" The Hunting Bishop " of Bristol. 163
sarcastic intention in the phrase. Be this as it may, his
address in the saddle was of service to the divine, both in
the time of the First Charles and bis son also.
From the name conferred upon Guy by his contempo
raries — " The Hunting Prelate " — it is clear he acquired
the accomplishment from following at one time or another
very enthusiastically " the noble art of venerie " — an art,
by the way, in which more than one eminent Churchman,
both before and since Carleton's day, has been well versed.
Here is a modern instance, as given by Nimrod. a famous
authority on field sports, in his book, "The Chase, the
Turf, and the Road. " " It is well known," he says,
" though it happened before I was born, that a certain
high-bred dignitary of the Church kept a pack of fox
hounds, and was one of the best sportsmen of his day.
When, however, the mitre adorned his brow, the hounds
were transferred to his noble brother, who continued them
in great style ; but the bishop did not attend them!
Taking a ride, however, one day in a country, in which
he thought it not unlikely he might see something of them,
he met the fox. The hounds were at fault; when, putting
his finger under his wig, his lordship gave one of his
beautiful view-halloos. ' Hark, halloo ! ' said one of the
field. The huntsman listened, and the halloo was repeated.
' That will do,' said he, knowing his old master's voice.
' That's gospel, by Jove ! ' '
We must not be so horrified at this, after all, for in early
times, instead of being thought a scandal, hunting was
recognised as an episcopal amusement ; for Blackstone
states that it is to this day a branch of the king's prero
gative, at the death of every bishop, to have his kennel of
hounds, or a compensation in lieu thereof, though doubt
less the royal perquisite originated in ante- Reformation
times. And of those times, so far as they applied to field
sports as followed by bishops and clergy, we have an
amusing and interesting record in Hallam's " Middle
Ages. " He says : —
" It was impossible to repress the eagerness with which the clergy,
especially after the barbarians had been tempted by rich bishoprics
to take upon them the sacred functions, rushed into these secular
amusements. Prohibitions of councils, however frequently repeated,

164 The Church-Goer.
produced little effect. In some instances a particular monastery ob
tained a dispensation. Thus that of Saint Denis, in 774, represented
to Charlemagne that the flesh of hunted animals was salutary for
sick monks, and that their skins would serve to bind the books in the
library. Reasons equally cogent, we may presume, could not be want
ing in every other case. As the bishops and abbots were perfectly
feudal lords, and often did not scruple to lead their vassals into the
field, it was not to be expected that they should debar themselves of
an innocent pastime. It was hardly such, indeed, when practised at
the expense of others. Alexander III., by a letter to the clergy of
Berkshire, dispenses with their keeping the archdeacon in dogs and
hawks during his visitation. This season gave jovial ecclesiastics an
opportunity of trying different countries. An Archbishop of York, in
1321, seems to have carried a train of two hundred persons, who were
maintained at the expense of the abbeys on his road, and to have
hunted with a pack of hounds, from parish to parish. The third Council
of Lateran, in 1180, had prohibited this amusement on such journeys,
and restricted bishops to a train of forty or fifty horses." — (Chap. ix.
Part 1.)
Just fancy Archdeacon Thorpe or Bishop Ellicott going
on their visitation tours with a scratch pack, and " charg
ing " fences and the clergy with equal spirit. The bishop,
I hear, is a first-class horseman, and thoroughly enjoys
his daily ride ; but I do not think he will ever trouble his
reverend brethren to supply him with " dogs," or "hawks "
either, during his visitations. I am quite sure the Vene
rable Thomas Thorpe will never take to cross-country
pursuits. At one time the bishops were somewhat troubled with
fox-hunting parsons, and it is reported that a certain pre
late, having driven one morning from a neighbouring seat
to attend divine service at a parish church where a sport
ing parson ministered, and seeing a gentleman in black
entering at the vestry door, he requested to know at what
hour the service commenced. " We throw off at eleven,"
was the reply. Gloucestershire had at one time rather an
unenviable fame in this respect, and it is reported that the
late Earl Fitzhardinge, being in a queer humour on a bad
finding day, when five clergymen were in the field, growled
out, " He only wished foxes where as plenty as parsons,
and they would not draw so many blank covers." It is,
however, by the rarest accident that one of the sacred
profession is now seen in the field. George III., as well
as Charles I., had once occasion to commend a learned

" The Hunting Bishop " of Bristol. 165
divine for his horsemanship. The Rev. F. Fowle was
rector of a parish four miles from Hungerford, and when
the country was threatened with invasion he came forward,
and took the command of a corps of Berks Yeomanry.
" On being reviewed by the king when on duty at Wind
sor," says the author of the "Hunting Tour," "his Majesty
was pleased to observe that Colonel Fowle was not only
one of his best cavalry officers, but one of the best
preachers, one of the best shots, and one of the best riders
to hounds in his dominions."
Amongst Devonshire sportsmen a good story is told
of a " hunting parson," who, I believe, is still in the flesh.
A kind-hearted, liberal man, "generous almost to a fault,"
as the phrase is, his reverence was, nevertheless, wedded
to field sports, and hunted about the best pack of fox
hounds that could be found in any county. Of course
his pastime did not find favour in the eyes of his diocesan,
and Henry of Exeter undertook one day, when he saw that
the opportunity was fitting, to remonstrate with his sport
ing clerical brother. " I .don't speak to you, my dear
friend," said the bishop, in his most courteous and blandest
of tones — and no one could be more courteous and bland
when he pleased — " I don't speak to you strictly as your
bishop, but more as a private friend : now, my dear Mr.
 •, I pnt it to you, is it wise that you should engage in
this hunting? " "Why not, my lord ? " asked the other.
" Well," said his lordship, " I'll tell you why. Clergymen
are but men, and I fear — though I know, my dear sir, you
would not do such a thing willingly — I fear that, excited
by the incidents of the chase, supposing a man rides too
close to hounds, as I believe the phrase is, or the scent is
bad, or something occurs to put you out, you may pos
sibly forget for a moment your position as a clergyman,
and make use of some hasty expression — I don't say an
oath, brother  , but something akin to it ; and surely
this, heard most likely by some of your parishioners, would
place you in a very unfavourable light." The reply of
the parson was characteristic. " If that be your only
objection, my lord, I think I can set your scruples at
rest. I am always well mounted, hunt my own pack, and
ride close to the hounds, invariably two fields ahead of

166 The Church-Goer.
any of my parishioners ; and I assure your lordship that
if I were to curse and swear like Balaam, not a soul
would hear me."*
Though Hallam intimates in the extract I have given
from his " Middle Ages," that hunting was permitted to
the members of religious houses in old times, we have an
entry in the ancient records of the Monastery of Saint
Augustine, Bristol, which shows that the pastime was not
always tolerated in holy friars ; for, as we know, the Bishop
of Worcester, who was the visitor of the Abbey, on one
occasion repressed several disorders in the house, and
" compelled the monks to put down their hounds." Had
there been a tidy pack kept within the same old walls
during Guy Carleton's bishopric, we suspect he would
have been more indulgent than his brother of Worcester
to the weakness of the Black Canons for a fresh and
healthy day's run across country.
Guy Carleton, though clearly not a liberal prelate, and
very much given to make a poor mouth of it, was a plucky
man, and not only served the Royal cause on horseback,
but suffered for his loyalty to King Charles. Wood says,
" It was reported that Dr. Carleton, in the beginning of
* The Rev. Charles Kingsley was more than tolerant of the chase,
for when he could get " a mount," and opportunity and it did not inter
fere with his work, he gladly joined in a day's run. He even spoke
of the foxes in a petting way as " part of hi3 flock." This passage,
which is characteristic, occurs in an epistle to his crony Tom Hughes,
["Letters and Memories of his Life," by his wife, vol. i. 349] . " I had
just done my work" he writes, "seen my poor, and dinner was coming
on the table yesterday, at just four o'clock, when thebow-wows appeared
on the top of the Mount, trying my patch of gorse ; so I jumped up,
left the cook shrieking, and off. He was not there, but I knew where
he was, for I kept a pretty good register of foxes (ain't they my parish
ioners and part of my flock ?) ; and as the poor fellows had had a
blank day, they were very thankful to find themselves, in five minutes,
going like mad. We had an hour and a half of it ; scent brea&t high,
as the dew began to rise (bleak north-wester always good weather) ;
and if we had not crossed a second fox, should have killed him in the
open. As it was, we lost him after sunset, after the finest grind I have
had this nine years, and I went back to my dinner. The old horse
behaved beautifully ; he is not fast, but in the enclosed woodlands,
he can live up to anyone, and earned great honour by leaping in
and out of the Loddon ; only four more doing it, and one receiving
a mucker. I feel three years younger to-day."

" The Hunting Bishop " of Bristol. 167
1660, was imprisoned in Lambeth House, and sentenced
to death, but by the help of his laundress made his escape
over the wall, took boat down the river, and found a pas
sage to Holland, where he presented himself to the king
at Breda, who received him with great surprise and joy,
having heard he was destined for execution." A second
version of the story of Guy's imprisonment and escape is
given on the authority of Macro. It is to this effect, that
Carleton having been dispossessed by the triers of the
vicarage of Hartley Court, in Berkshire, was afterwards
taken up and imprisoned, as has been before stated, in
Lambeth House. His wife contrived to convey a rope to
him, by which he was to let himself out of the window to
the Thames, where a boat was waiting for him. " The
cord was too short," adds the writer, " but he trusted to
it rather than stay where he was, and falling some part of
the way, dislocated a bone : the boat carried him off, and
he was concealed until he recovered, when his wife was
forced to sell the bed from under her to pay for the cure."
He then got on shipboard, and went abroad to the king.
The manner of Guy's death was strange, as told by
Kennett, who says he had the account viva voce from
another. It appears that the bishop, after his elevation
to Chichester, became a strict vegetarian, living almost
wholly on pulse, without any flesh food. One day a dish
of kidney beans was provided for him, when " a string of
one of the bean-pods stuck in his throat, and was soon the
cause of his death." Had tbe bishop been a disciple of
Pythagoras this could not have occurred, as the followers
of the great philosopher most strictly abstained from
eating beans, owing to the alleged likeness of that vege
table to a portion of the human person. " Are you fond of
vegetables ? " said a lady to Brummel. " Yes," was the
reply; " I once ate a pea. " Poor Guy Carleton, it ap
pears, ate a bean once too often for his well-being. The
accident occurred at Westminster, while he was attending
Parliament in the July of 1685. His body was conveyed
to Chichester, and there buried. It is probable that in a
grave in the choir, bearing the motto " Sans varier," sleeps
" The Hunting Prelate," until the day when not " the horn
of chase," but the archangel's trumpet, shall awaken him.

% Chapter on an #Io Chapter.
WITH the death of Canon Bankes (1867), we turn
over the concluding page of an old Bristol Chapter.
When on Saturday I passed the cathedral, and the flag,
half-masted, flapped heavily on the tower-top while the
bell tolled slowly, I was reminded of that day in Febru
ary, 1849, when tbe whole force of the old Collegiate
Church was gathered round the table at which Bishop
Monk presided as visitor, to inquire into what was said to
be, and I believe was, a breach of the statutes by the
attempt of the then dean and his colleagues to greatly
curtail the musical services of tbe church. Bishop,
dean, and chapter, where are they now ? Monk, and
Lamb, and Bond, and Somerset, and Harvey, and Lee,*
and Bankes ? All gathered to their fathers in the
eighteen years that have since passed away. " The
solemn vacancy that," according to Sydney Smith, " o'er-
shadowed Gloucester " is now more than a figure of
speech. It was a favourite expression of Dean Lamb's —
which he inherited from one of his predecessors, the
little rotund bachelor, Dr. Beeke — when pressed to do
anything for choir or fabric, " Oh, there, never mind ; it
* Dr. Samuel Lee, of Queen's College, Cambridge, was Professor
of Arabic from 1819 to 1831, and Regius Professor of Hebrew from
1831 to 1848. In the life and letters of C. Darwin, recently pub
lished, we find the following reference to tbe Doctor in a letter from
Darwin to his sister, dated May 16th, 1838, describing a visit of
three days to Cambridge : " Sunday, dined at Trinity ; capital dinner,
and was very glad to sit by Professor Lee. ... I find him a very
pleasant, chatting man, and in high spirits, like a boy, at having
lately returned from a living or a curacy for seven years in Somerset
shire to civilized society and Oriental manuscripts. He had ex
changed his living to one within fourteen miles of Cambridge, and
seemed perfectly happy." 168

A Chapter on an Old Chapter. 169
will last out my day." For both used always to live
under the impression that they had pretty well arrived at
the end and finish of deans and chapters, and that if the
deluge did not come after them, it could not be many-
years ere the cathedral was converted into a Congrega
tional church, or something of the kind. But old St.
Augustine's has contrived to last out their day and some
days more. The late head of Corpus Christi, Cambridge,
was a thorough utilitarian ; and like not a few of that
school, he deceived himself by too great a belief in the
universality of his principle. Neither he nor Beeke
dreamt that the time would come when the cathedral
service, instead of dying out as an obsolete form of wor
ship, would become all popular, even with the masses,
which now is the case in many cities ; while the Colle
giate Church is the most crowded by the humbler classes,
including Dissenters. Dean Lamb was a strong, shrewd-
headed man, with a prompt, every-day common sense,
but not much of the cleric about him ; while, so little
religious rigour had he, that I think he subscribed to some
dissenting schools in the parish. Before Lamb was Mus-
grave, afterwards Archbishop of York, and only dimly
remembered in the list of deans, as he merely held the
post from May to October, in the year 1837 ; long
enough, however, to be liked by the citizens, cathedral
folks, and cathedral-goers. Dr. Musgrave was an
amateur musician, and played very fairly on the piano.
During his brief tenancy of the Deanery, one rarely
passed tbe old Dove-house after nightfall without hear
ing him, as he tried his hand on some piece of Church
music. Before Musgrave was Beeke, already referred to,
of whom Sydney Smith jocosely wrote to Lady Holland,
that he was so short, the bishop, when he had to confer
with him, was compelled to get on his knees, so as to
bring himself on a speaking level with the head of the
chapter. Beeke was a great arithmetician, and it was
said that Mr. Vansittart gave him the post in recognition
of some valuable services, which he rendered him as
Chancellor of the Exchequer in his financial calculations.
Beeke was preceded by Parsons, Parsons by Bower
Spark, afterwards Bishop of Chester; Spark by Layard,

170 The Church-Goer.
the unhappy man who sold the eagle lectern for old
brass, and got so soundly rated for his sacrilegious act,
that it was generally considered he died from the fatal
effects of public opinion. Before Layard was Hallam,
father of tbe author of " The Middle Ages." For all
present purposes, this is far enough to go back in the line
of deans.
Of the old Chapter, its senior member, the venerable
Canon Bond, was so aged in 1849, that it was with some
difficulty he attended the bishop's visitation in connection
with the chanting controversy, when, if I mistake not,
he took a different side to the dean and Dr. Lee. Dr.
Lee was, perhaps, the most determined anti-chanter in
the Chapter. He spoke and wrote not a few pamphlets,
many of the latter sharp and vigorous enough in favour
of "what he declared was the superior common sense,
dignity, reverence, and respect of saying our prayers in
the natural voice, instead of " drawling them through the
nose," which, he contended, " all chanting, single and
double," amounted to. Yet, strange to say, Professor
Lee, like Dr. Musgrave, was no bad musician himself.
He could take part in a vocal quartette, and blow a flute
very fairly through a piece of Beethoven. But there was
one thing the Professor liked better than music — better
even than his annual division of capitular profits, aye (I
was going to say), better than life itself, and that was
controversy, verbal warfare on paper or off paper, but
particularly the former. This chanting business af
forded grand scope for his favourite pastime, and he
rushed with all his pugnacious instinct into the fray.
For a while his love of philological "warfare induced him
to maintain single-handed a battle against a whole college
of German pedants and Dutch scholiasts, who said very
hard things of him, and got in return quite as good as
they gave. The great Hebraist, however, bore no actual
malice to any one. His heart, it was true, was with
Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in
Mesopotamia, or at least with their literature ; but he was
a blunt, honest Englishman by nature and combative
instinct. A greater contrast to the erudite professor, so full of

A Chapter on an Old Chapter. 171
book lore and critical learning — so rare and triumphant
an example of one who pursued knowledge under difficul
ties — there could hardly have been, than was presented
in the person of one of his contemporaries and colleagues,
the Rev. Lord William Somerset, the soldier-priest, but
no Knight Templar, of whom it might have been con
fidently said that, though up to the time of his death he
derived from family livings and his prebendal stall £3,100
a year, he never once wrote a sermon. Indeed, some
people have maintained that he never preached one; but
this is a mistake. He did — rarely, I admit, but I know an
old cathedral attendant who heard him at least twice.
Before he entered the Church he was a bold dragoon, and
doubtless deported himself when there was any fighting
to do, "with the hereditary valour of his race"; but
when there was no more fighting to do, he entered the
Church — Cedant arma togce. He was a grand man, hand
some, like all his house ; but anything more unlike a
successor of the apostles or the ecclesiastical descendant
of poor fishermen and tent-makers, you could not imagine
than he was, when you saw him, service over on week
days, mount tbe box of his four-in-hand, which awaited
bim at the north porch, and drive out of the Green, the
greatest of whips and the least of theologians.
What was said of Lord William Somerset in the
matter of preaching was also said of the Rev. John
Surtees, canon for almost forty years, namely, that he
never preached. Here again, however, the assertion was
not strictly correct. Canon Surtees did preach sometimes
— not often, certainly — within the memory of man ; but
I do not suppose that those who knew him could with a
clear conscience declare they believed he ever composed a
discourse in his life. It was said that he occasionally
paid a minor canon for one, but that he subsequently
fonnd out a shop where he could get supplied on more
reasonable terms, and, constitutionally economical, availed
himself of it. For myself, 1 will say that, though I
remembered him as one of the Chapter for at least
twenty years, and have heard it stated he was wanting
neither in good nature, pleasant manner, nor obliging
disposition, I never saw him in the pulpit, and it cer-

172 The Church-Goer.
tainly could not be said of him, as Canon Moseley said of
Canon Bankes on Sunday, that he was strictly regular in
his residence, and discharged the duties of his post with
unequalled punctuality.*
Canon Harvey was quite another man, polished and
precise. He had been the tutor of Prince George, after
wards Duke of Cambridge, and always retained a certain
courtly prestige, I suppose from his previous avocation.
He was a neat preacher, but there was nothing striking
or powerful in his sermons ; and if you had inscribed on
his tomb, " Here lies a highly respectable member of a
Capitular body," you would probably have characterised
him without any greater accumulation of words.
With the Rev. Edward Bankes I may say in words
with which we are all familiar, " Here endeth the Chap
ter," at least the old Chapter — as it existed when the
chanting commission of 1849 sat. Mr. Bankes, like Mr.
Surtees, was fortunate in being connected with the family
of the old Protestant Ascendency Lord Chancellor, Eldon.
One got two canonries from " Old Bags," and the other
got one. Canon Bankes belonged to an ancient and
historic family, being the descendant of that Attorney-
General Bankes, whose wife, Lady Bankes, so bravely
defended Corfe Castle in tbe cause of Charles I. Of the
Canon, just deceased, it could not certainly be said as of
Lord William Somerset and Mr. Surtees, that he never
wrote a sermon. It is very probable that he never in his
life preached any man's composition but his own, and it
is asserted that he always preached a new one. For my
part, I quite believe that they were all original — and that
they were all by the same hand : the peculiar " hall
mark " was on them all. There was no mistaking Canon
Bankes' style ; if you had been a Cathedral-goer, you
would have known one of his sermons if you heard it
preached by a missionary in Connemara, or on tbe top of
tbe Carpathian mountains. His later discourses, like
* Talking of punctual attendance, I have heard a cathedral-goer
say he was, more than forty years ago, at the College, on a Christmas
Day, when the only clergyman present was Precentor Cross, who,
unassisted, had to do all the service — chanting, reading, preaching,
and afterwards administering the Holy Communion — himself.

A Chapter on an Old Chapter. 173
those of the archbishop whom Gil Bias served, savoured
somewhat of old age and infirmity, but his earlier ones
were for the most part clever, sometimes clear, and always
peculiar ; but the family resemblance, first and last, was
evident in all. He was a polite, gentlemanly, mildly-
speaking man, and immensely rich ; and this is pretty
well all I can say of him.

% Stuoxxii Cfraptn- on an <$!& Chapter.
IN noticing the canons who have held stalls in the Bris
tol Cathedral within the memory of some men still
living, I omitted three past prebends — not through any
oversight, but my first paper was, I thought, sufficient
for one article, so I postponed what I had further to say
for a second insertion.
Canon Randolph was instituted as far back as 1791,
but he held his stall long enough to preach a sermon on
the coronation of George IV., which sermon has been
described to me by some who heard it. Randolph was
a disappointed courtier ; he was patronised by the Prince
Regent, and, if I might so term it, " disgraced " by the
same royal master. I now forget the particulars of the
intrigue with which he was mixed up, or said to be, but it
had something to do with the Regent's conjugal quarrels.
It was reported he was the bearer of a letter, and betrayed
his trust, by delivering the missive to the party for whom
it was not intended. He was a courtier until his fall,
and then, feeling that " if it rained mitres," not one of
them would be found to fit him, he became a Radical.
When George IV. was crowned, it was an occasion for
sermons in almost every pulpit in the kingdom, not
through any particular love of the king personally, but
on account of the principle of loyalty which actuated
Englishmen. The Rev. Francis Randolph was then in
residence, and people who knew his secret history were
curious to hear how he would deal with the subject.
He certainly did not shirk it. The coronation, as my
elder readers will probably remember, was accompanied
with a grand banquet given in Westminster Hall. The
disappointed canon and discarded courtier seized upon
174

A Second Chapter on an Old Chapter. 175
the incident as suggestive of a text. He was a fine man
and of a commanding presence, a sonorous voice, and a
showy delivery ; so you may be sure he created no small
sensation, when, having ascended the pulpit and looked
around him, as though he would say, " Listen, and you
shall not be disappointed," he slowly and significantly
gave out the words of his text, " Belshazzar, the king,
made a great feast." The text was enough. It brought
before your eyes at once the tableau of the awful orgies of
the profane King of Babylon ; and the similitude which
they were supposed to bear to the banquet of the newly-
crowned monarch of England, was, as you may surmise,
anything but flattering. It was the canon's time for
revenge, and he took it without stint, drawing a parallel
between the two great feasts on the banks of the Thames,
and on the banks of the Euphrates, and censuring the
wanton waste of the most recent royal reveller and his
lords, while thousands in the lanes and alleys of his
capital were perishing of hunger. But "Mene, mene, tekel
upharsin" was, he said, written on the wall in both cases,
though the characters were only legible in one. It was
rumoured that it was only the license accorded to the
pulpit "which saved the canon from a prosecution. Cer
tainly, the sermon, printed in the form of a newspaper
article, would have brought down the heavy hand of the
attorney-general on the devoted head of the editor. So
far as Randolph was concerned, it did him neither good
nor harm. People knew his motive for delivering it, and
attributed the tirade rather to malice than to moral daring.
The discourse, however, earned for its author the name of
" Old Belshazzar," which be retained up to the time of
his death.
Two of Randolph's contemporaries in the cathedral
were Canons Whately and Blomberg. The former was
father of the late Archbishop of Dublin, who always, I
have heard, retained a boy's pleasant memories of Old
Bristol. Meeting a member of the cathedral not many
years ago, his Grace inquired, "if they were still kept
awake by the singing of the nightingales " ; saying that,
as a lad, he was often robbed of his repose by the music
of Philomel. As nightingales have not been heard of, or

176 The Church-Goer.
heard, in the Lower Green within the memory of man,
this would seem to have been a pleasantry or mistake of
the archbishop, but I have heard a very old inhabitant
strangely confirm the fact in this way : He said Canon
Whately for a time lived in a house in St. James's
Barton, the canon's residence allotted to him being occu
pied ; and in the Barton there then also resided an old
naturalist, who kept nightingales, which sang all the
night in summer ; and it was doubtless these birds that
had made such an impression on young Whateley.
Canon Blomberg (or Dr. Blomberg, as I think he was
called) was said by some to be the illegitimate son of
George III., but was generally reputed the foster-brother
of George IV. There is an old story connected with him
about a spiritual apparition, which I have been trying to
remember. I once either read it or heard it, but I cannot
call it to mind, though it was said to have obtained for
him his canonry. Whether the mysterious visitant re
commended him for the stall or not, I am unable to say.
In any case, the canon was a ghost-seer, and the Bishop
of Gloucester of his day was one also, and both divines
used to keep one another well posted up in the latest
intelligence from the other world. They would have
been in the height of their happiness had they lived in
these times of table-rapping and media. At a sermon
Blomberg was poor, but give him a fiddle, and he had few
superiors. He was always playing when he could, and
always quoting when he had the opportunity the words,
" Ciihara tollit curas " ; though what cares a man with
good church preferment, wealth, and royal patrons could
have beyond the breaking of a fiddle-string, I cannot
imagine. So fond was he of his instrument, that he had
a desk fitted up for music books in his chariot, and would
scrape away behind four posters as he made his periodical
journeys to and from London. When in Bristol the tones
of his Cremona would be heard for hours together as he
practised in the minor canon's vestry, and the sub-
sacristan had often to interrupt him, as the doors were
opened for afternoon service, lest the people, as they
entered, should hear the distant tones of his instrument.
He played duets with his foster-brother George IV., who

A Second Chapter on an Old Chapter. 177
was one of the best violoncellists in England. Rest to
poor Blomberg's ashes ; those who did not care to listen
to his sermons were well pleased to hear his solos : and I
am not one of those who hold fiddling cheap, or think
with Mawworm that it is only the " scraping of the hairs
of the horse upon the bowels of the cat."
Talking of this same vestry, which the canon made
his music-room, it reminds one of an inner apartment
adjoining the chapter-room, which the authorities con
structed for the safe custody of their deeds and documents
after the riots, when the mob made a bonfire of their
books. Into the wall of this curious and all but Cham
ber of Horrors are built no less than eleven stone coffins,
the receptacles of as many abbots and priors of past ages,
whose dust lay at rest under the pavement of the chapter-
room, until their coffins were required for coffers. It was
an ingenious but ghoul-like idea that first suggested the
utilisation of such solemn articles for Milner's safes and
strong boxes.
Extracts from an " Old Chapter," however brief, would
be egregionsly defective without an allusion to Sydney
Smith, instituted 1828. Still, nothing is less needed than
a notice of a man who, besides having a world-wide cele
brity, has had two thick octavo volumes of memoirs devoted
to him He did not remain in Bristol long, but, judging
from his letters, he liked his quarters. He praised his
prebendal house (the one just within the Lower Green, at
the right hand as you enter it) to Lady Holland ; said he
could see "the ships of the world" from his windows,
and offered her stabling for her four horses, if she would
come and see him. He visited a little, but evidently
laughed in his sleeve at our old-fashioned habits of
thought and manners. I remember hearing that he used
to go to the butcher's on Saint Augnstine's Back to see
his own pinbone steak cut ; and of his answer to a young
Bristol clergyman, who applied to him for the curacy of
Combe Florey, which had been advertised. " What is
the stipend, Mr. Smith?" asked the applicant. "Nothing
very extensive," was the canon's reply ; " but there are
the chances." " What chances ? '' naturally inquired
the other. "The matrimonial chances," said Sydney.
N

178 The Church-Goer.
" My last curate, after his first sermon, had three offers
— one from the north aisle and two from the gallery."
His great feat, and that which particularly associated
him with Bristol, was his fifth of November sermon — a
most temperate discourse, which nevertheless created a
commotion. The Corporation, before whom, according
to ancient and laudable custom, it was preached in the
cathedral, being used to very strong meat upon these
occasions, were astonished, when instead of finding Guy
Fawkes and his Popish friends roasted, they were lectured
upon Christian moderation and enlarged charity. His
daughter, in the Memoir, alludes to this discourse and
the effect it produced, but she does not quote it, save the
famous Eastern apologue with which it closes. It was,
however, printed at the time (I think by T. J. Manchee,
at the. Mercury office), and I have seen a copy of it. His
text was from Colossians iii. 12, 13 : " Put on as the
elect of God kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness,
long-suffering, forbearing one another, and forgiving one
another," — a text in itself sufficiently premonitory of the
spirit that would actuate the preacher. Some of the open
ing passages are applicable to the present time, for he
enumerated amongst the wise and lawful uses of the
day, " an honest self-congratulation that we had burst
through those bands which the Roman Catholic priest
hood had imposed upon human judgment : that the Pro
testant Church not only permits but exhorts man to
appeal from human authority to the Scriptures ; that it
makes of the clergy guides and advisers, not masters and
oracles ; that it discourages vain and idle ceremonies,
unmeaning observances, and hypocritical pomp, and en
courages freedom in thinking of religion and simplicity
in religious forms." Nevertheless, he spoke of the much-
debated Catholic Emancipation Bill with warm approba
tion, and this at a time when there were strong and
angry feelings abroad in the country. He condemned
interference, especially legal interference, with each
other's religious opinions, preferring to "leave to the
power and wisdom of God that which belonged to God
alone. Where are we called upon in Scripture," said he,
"to pursue men for errors purely speculative — to assist

A Second Chapter on an Old Chapter. 179
heaven in punishing those offences which belong only to
heaven ? — in fighting unasked for what we deem to be
the battles of God — of that patient and merciful God who
pities the frailties we do not pity — who forgives the errors
we do not forgive — who sends rain upon the just and the
unjust, and maketh His sun to shine upon the evil and
the good ? "
He did not force these opinions on his auditors, he said;
be merely suggested them as his own, and he added, with
a candour, characteristic of tbe man in his serious mo
ments, great a joker as be was at other times : " That
charity, which I ask for others, I ask also for myself. I
am sure I am preaching before those who will think
(whether they agree with me or not) that 1 have spoken
conscientiously, and from good motives, and from honest
feelings, on a very difficult subject — not sought for by
me, but devolving upon me in tbe course of duty — in
which I should have been heartily ashamed of myself (as
you would have been ashamed of me), if I had thought
only how to flatter and please, or thought of anything
but what I hope I always do think of in the pulpit — that
I am placed here by God to tell the truth and to do
good." But the crown and glory of that 5th of November
sermon was the closing apologue, by which he illustrated
and enforced the spirit and principle of true religious
toleration. He said he believed it was quoted by Bishop
Taylor, in his "Holy Living and Dying": he (S. S.),
however, was obliged to give it to them from memory. It
has been often reprinted, but it cannot be too often re
peated : — " As Abraham was sitting at the door of his
tent, there came unto him a wayfaring man : and Abra
ham gave him water for his feet, and set bread before
him. And Abraham said unto him, ' Let us now worship
the Lord our God before we eat of this bread.' And the
wayfaring man said unto Abraham, ' I will not worship
the Lord thy God, for thy God is not my God ; but I will
worship my God, even the God of my fathers.' But
Abraham was exceeding wroth : and he rose up to put
the wayfaring man forth from the door of his tent.
And tbe voice of the Lord was heard in the tent. ' Abra-

180 The Church-Goer.
ham, Abraham, have I borne with this man for three
score and ten years, and canst not thou bear with him
one hour ? "
Sydney Smith, as we have seen, said he quoted from
memory. The passage, as printed in the " Liberty of
Prophesying," runs as follows, and I need hardly say, for
simple beauty and dignity, the Canon's version of it from
memory is far superior to the original apologue, which, as
I learn from a note in the Memoirs, was cited by Bishop
Taylor from Gentius' preface to his Latin translation of
Saadi :—
"When Abraham sat at his tent door, according to his custom,
waiting to entertain strangers, he espied an old man stooping and
leaning on his staffe, weary with age and travelle, coming towards
him, who was a hundred years of age ; he received him kindly,
washed his feet, provided supper, caused him to sit down, but ob
serving tbat the old man eat and prayed not, nor begged for a bless
ing on his meat, asked him why he did not worship the God of
heaven ? The old man told him he worshipped the fire only, and
acknowledged no other God : at which answer Abraham grew so
zealously angry, that he thrust the old man out of his tent, and ex
posed him to all the evils of the night and an unguarded position.
When the old man was gone, God called him, and asked him where
the stranger was ; he replied, ' I thrust him away because he did not
worship Thee.' God answered him, 'I have suffered him these hun
dred years, although he dishonoured me, and couldst thou not endure
him one night ? he gave thee no trouble.' Upon this, saith the
story, Abraham fetcht him back again, and gave him hospitable en
tertainment and wise instruction. Go thou and do likewise, and thy
charity will be rewarded by the God of Abraham."
Gentius was a Jew, but of him or his work I frankly
confess I know no more than I read of both in a letter
from Everett, the American minister, to Lady Holland,
apparently in answer to one he had received from the
canon's daughter, asking for information on the subject
of this apologue. Everett, who observes that this same
parable is one of the most curious topics in literary his
tory, writes that in its modern form it was first published
by Lord Karnes in 1774, who said it was communicated
to him by Dr. Franklin, of Philadelphia. When it was
afterwards discovered in tbe writings of Gentius the Jew,
or it may be in Bishop Taylor's book, the great Ameri-

A Seco)id Chapter on an Old Chapter. 181
can was charged with plagiarism, a charge from which
some of his posthumous friends indignantly defended
him. Be this as it may, the apologue, and indeed the whole
sermon, created, as might be expected, immense sensation
at the time, " and the cathedral," said his daughter, in
the Memoir, " was from that period filled to suffocation,
though previously almost deserted. A crowd," she con
tinued, " collected round the doors long before they were
opened, and the heads of the standers in the aisle were
so thick-set you could not have thrust in another ; and
I saw the men holding up their hats above their heads,
that they might not be crushed by the pressure." "He
preached," says an eye-witness, whom she quotes, " finely
and bravely on the occasion, and in direct opposition to
the principles and prejudices of the persons in authority
present, and yet never did anybody to my mind look more
like a High Churchman, as he walked up the aisle to tbe
altar— there was an air of so much proud dignity in his
appearance ; and when I saw him afterwards more inti
mately in private life, I became aware he had a lofty,
brave soul, with an intense contempt for everything that
was mean, base, or truckling."
Sydney's own account of the affair, in a letter dated
" Lower College Green, November 7," and addressed to
his friend Lyttleton, is more easy and characteristic.
"At Bristol," he writes, "on the 5th of November, I gave
the Mayor and Corporation (the most Protestant Mayor
and Corporation in England) such a dose of toleration as
shall last them for many a year. A deputation of pro-
Popery papers waited on me to-day to print, but I de
clined. I told the Corporation, at the end of my sermon
that beautiful rabbinical story quoted by Jeremy Taylor,
' As Abraham was sitting at the door of his tent,' etc.,
etc., which, by the bye, would make a charming and use
ful placard against the bigoted."
I may return to the subject of old Chapters ; for the
present, however, I conclude, merely adding what I have
been told by an old Bristolian touching Dean Beeke, that
the little divine was the author of the 3| per cents, issued
by Mr. Vansittart, Chancellor of the Exchequer, after the

182 The Church-Goer.
close of the French Revolutionary war. If so, Dean
Beeke was the innocent author of the financial ruin of
Hart Davis and a few Bristol families, who put their faith
in the new stock, speculated largely, and lost largely.

% Oirb Chapter on an #.li> Chapter.
THERE is a story of, I think, a Swedish savant, who,
writing a book upon Iceland, and wishing to be me
thodical, put each section under a separate heading. One
was " Snakes in Iceland," which was immediately followed
by the naive announcement, " There are no snakes in Ice
land." In imitation of the Scandinavian sage, I am con
strained to say there is nothing about the Chapter in my
" Third Chapter on an old Chapter." But having written
so much about our cathedral, I felt it wonld be an un
pardonable omission if I neglected to notice the fact that
the sole surviving member of the old collegiate church —
of all who occupied it even so recently as a score years
ago — is the worthy organist, John Davis Corfe, who, so
far as his original contemporaries go, may be said to
" stand alone, like Adam's recollection of his fall." For
almost forty years long he presided at an instrument which
has been in use for nearly two hundred years, having played
at it the Dead March in Saul for every one of an old, and
played in every one of a new, Chapter.
Corfe succeeded John Wasbrough — John Wasbrough
his father, Rice Wasbrough — both good, old-fashioned
players: " very like my grandfather," said J. D. C, when
one day I asked his opinion of his predecessors. And
Corfe's grandfather and father, and, I believe, great
grandfather, all could play. His father, who died when
nearly ninety, and who might be almost said to have ex
pired at the organ of Salisbury, was as fine an old Chris
tian musician as ever placed finger on ivory or foot upon
pedal.* * Mr. Corfe, too, has been "played out." Early in 1876 he was laid
to rest under the shadow of the old cathedral, which so often echoed
with his music. 183

184 The Church-Goer.
Bristol Cathedral, indeed, can boast of its famous choir
masters as well as its famous divines ; for if it had Butler
amongst its bishops, and Warburton amongst its deans,
and Sydney Smith amongst its canons, it also had Elwyn
Bevin amongst its organists. Our ancient collegiate
church ought, therefore, to be classic ground to the lover
of sacred music, as it was here that this gifted composer,
in the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and James I., wrote
many of his canons and other compositions, and achieved
a fame which still lives. He was a Welshman, and ob
tained the post of organist of Bristol Cathedral through
the recommendation of Tallis ; but after having held the
office for some years, he had to quit, being, we are told,
suspected of a leaning to Popery. Nearly at the same
time that Bevin occupied the organ loft of Bristol, Orlan
do Gibbons held the same situation in Canterbury Cathe
dral, Bull in Hereford, Byrd in Lincoln, and Weelkes in
Winchester — a golden age for Church music, when canons
really sang, and the choral service was not slurred over
as a thing to be got rid of at the cheapest rate and in
the most expeditious manner. Child, only second to his
great master, was Bevin's pupil at Bristol, and here, at the
old instrument, now in a new case, practised some of his
early lessons. To the disgrace of the frivolous Charles
the Second, who had wholly French tastes in music — as
in everything else, save roast mutton — while Child could
not get his salary at Windsor, the libertine monarch had
for his band-master a Frenchman named Laniere, whose
business it was to adapt some of the softly sensuous or
showy and somewhat operatic choruses, written for
Roman Catholic services, to those of the English Church.
It has been the practice to abuse Oliver Cromwell as a
Goth and Vandal in these matters ; but let it not be for
gotten that while Charles neglected or corrupted our
choirs, Old Noll erected the organ at Hampton Court
Palace, and, as Professor Taylor reminds us, "retained
Hingston, a pupil of Orlando Gibbons, in his service;
continued Henry Lawes in his place in the chapel; ordered
the music lectures to be regularly delivered at Oxford ;
and compelled a Royalist, who had robbed tbe music
school there of its library, to restore his plunder."

A Third Chapter on an Old Chapter. 185
The effect of the Restoration was anything but a resto
ration of good Church music, and the description which
Evelyn gave of our Church service after the so-called
Merrie Monarch had ascended his father's throne, may be
taken as a sample of most Church services then. "I went
to-day to the Chapel Royal," writes that thorough-bred
English gentleman in his diary, "when one of his Majesty's
chaplains preached; after which, instead of the grave and
solemn organ, was introduced a band of twenty-four fiddles,
after the French way — better suiting a play-house or a
tavern, than a church. We heard no more of the organ ;
that noble instrument, in which our English musicians do
most excel, is quite left off." But what could you expect
from a sovereign and age that preferred foreign band
masters to Henry Purcell ?
With a short eclipse every now and again, the service
of Bristol Cathedral has been commendable, and at times
eminently good ; and if we live to see a new nave,* we
may hope to see a new era in its choir also. I confess I
am no admirer of the frog-like efforts made by some puny
parish "High folks," who blow themselves up in tbe
matter of Church music so as to imitate cathedral choirs :
but, as a fact, our cathedrals are at this moment the
staunchest places of Protestant worship in the country.
Popery is not played into people by Tallis or Tye, Byrd
or Bateson, Farrant or Farmer ; and to refuse to support
the cathedral services, lest you suffocate the Reformed
faith that is in English folks, is like the precaution of the
lunatic doctor, who refused one patient a pound of pickled
salmon lest he might cut his throat with it, and starved
another to prevent his suicidally choking himself with
his food.
I believe there is not even one of the original bedesmen
or blue-coated pensioners of twenty years ago left. Per
haps the recollection of few or none of my readers carries
them back to the time of old Moss, the predecessor of
William Phillips in the subsacristan's office. Phillips him
self — the little grey-headed, keen-eyed man of long drab
gaiters, who daily libelled the memory of Abbot Newland,
* We have since seen the new nave.

186 The Church-Goer.
by telling all to whom lie showed the cathedral, that the
abbatical dignitary in question maintained thirteen concu
bines — is fading from one's memory, save when the story
of the attack upon the cathedral by the mob at the time
of the Bristol riots is retailed. We have all heard how
bravely the old man, with an iron stanchion in his hand,
stood at the door to defend the edifice, and mainly helped
to save it from the ruin that involved the adjoining palace.
The Chapter had the stanchion gilded, and gave him a
silver goblet in acknowledgment of bis gallantry, and
stanchion and goblet he handed down to his family as heir
looms, of which they may well be proud.
Accustomed as I was to the old cathedral, with its plea
sant open nave and choir enclosed, I have never felt at
home in it since the Chapter metamorphosed it into the
likeness of a large parish church. The change may be
all right — it probably is all right from a utilitarian point
of view : but I miss the old stone pulpit and the dreamy
side aisles, filled only by the echoes from the choir. I
miss the old organ loft, with some of the monuments and
all the minor prophets beneath it, as I miss Doctor Peter
Peace, and John Peace, and Geo. Garrard, and dear old
Milsom's blue worsted stockings, and William Fripp's
stalwart figure, and Killigrew Wait's familiar tones in
the chant (all departed). The former city librarian
used to say the Puritans left us half a cathedral, and
Parliament left us half a bishop. Whole men and whole
minsters, as well as whole measures, are, I suppose, best ;
but I am one of those who can hardly reconcile themselves
to change, even when it promises to carry improvement
with it.
And here end my chapters upon an old Chapter.

[adv.

Crown Svo, pp. viii. + 262. 3s. 6d.
BEIEF ROMANCES FROM
BRISTOL HISTOBY,
WITH OTHER PAPERS,
Contributed to "The Bristol Times," "Felix Farley," and "The
Bristol Times and Mirror," from 1839 to 1883,
BY
JOSEPH LEECH.

BRISTOL: WILLIAM GEORGE'S SONS.
MDCCCLXXXIV.

[foe list of contents, p.t.o.

ADV.]
CONTENTS.

ROMANCES FROM BRISTOL HISTORY.
Under this heading I have tried to call attention to the many
picturesque, curious, and often quaint, entries to be met with in the
chronicles of our old city. — Preface.
Chronicles of the Black Cartons of £>t. Augustine's :—
The Hunting Monks. The False Almoner. An Unex
pected Witness. The Irreverent Monks. The Old Abbot.
The Abbot's Tree. Murder of the Abbot's Steward. Wrest
ling Mayors and Fighting Abbots. Last of the Abbots.
Canynges' Wife and the Elixir. Canynges' Choice.
Canynges' Reverie. Canynges' Brewer.
Edward Colston's Apocryphal Love Story. Colston and
the Widow.
The Boatwomen of Redcliffe. Cecilia de la Warre. The
Castle and the Church. A Tooth for a Tooth. The Silver
Cradle. A Bristol Blanket. Judgment Vault of St. Augus
tine's. Pitch and Pay. Lord Berkeley's Vow. Legends of.
Brandon Hill. Moral on Milliners' Bills. Earliest Water-
Cure. The Alderman in Pledge. The Banker's Dream.
Buried without his Shirt. The Lady in White. Miles
Callowhill. Duck-Hunting Magistrates. Good Value for a
Dinner. Billy Miller and his Clerk. The Armourer and the
Monk. The Miniature. Bristol Alderman and his Step-
Daughter. Attorney Fane. A Queer Inscription : Richard
Baggs. Jenny Rudge. Mystery of College Green.
THE ADDITIONAL PAPERS ARE—
A Paper on Penny Readings by one who Broke Down. An
Extraordinary Cellar of Wine. The Bachelors of Frenchay.
Two Bristol Mediciners and Memorialists. William Barrett.
Young Ladies' Fortunes. The Two Bristol Candidates.
Tombs and Tablets in Bristol. The Newton Tombs. Sir
Chas. Wetherell. Crystal Cage (1851).

BRISTOL: WILLIAM GEOEGE'S SONS.

YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

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