fault with the sermon every Sunday, says that the
organist ought to be ashamed of himself, and offers to
back himself for any amount to sing the psalms better
than all the children put together.

This reminds us that during the first half of last century,
and indeed later in many places, the church choir as we know
it did not exist, and the leading of the singing was entrusted
to the children of the charity school under the direction of
the clerk, a custom which had existed since the seventeenth
century. The chancel was never used for the choir, and the
children sat up in the gallery at the west end, on either side
of the organ. In a City church that Dickens attended the choir
was limited to two girls. The organ was so out of order that
he could 'hear more of the rusty working of the stops than of
any music.' When the service began he was so depressed that,
as he says,

I gave but little heed to our dull manner of ambling
through the service; to the brisk clerk's manner of
encouraging us to try a note or two at psalm time;
to the gallery congregation's manner of enjoying a
shrill duet, without a notion of time or tune; to the
whity-brown man's manner of shutting the minister into
the pulpit, and being very particular with the lock
of the door, as if he were a dangerous animal.

Elsewhere he found in the choir gallery an 'exhausted
charity school' of four boys and two girls. The congregations
were small, a state of things which at any rate satisfied
Mrs. Lirriper, who had a pew at St. Clement Danes and was
'partial to the evening service not too crowded.'

In _Sunday under Three Heads_ we have a vivid picture of the
state of things at a fashionable church. Carriages roll up,
richly dressed people take their places and inspect each other
through their glasses.

The organ peals forth, the hired singers commence a
short hymn, and the congregation condescendingly rise,
stare about them and converse in whispers.

Dickens passes from church to chapel. Here, he says,

the hymn is sung--not by paid singers, but by the
whole assembly at the loudest pitch of their voices,
unaccompanied by any musical instrument, the words
being given out, two lines at a time, by the clerk.

It cannot be said that, as far as the music is concerned,
either of these descriptions is exaggerated when we remember
the time at which they were written (1838). Very few cha