Who incense burns? are strange cakes made?
What woman's chapel, decked with gold,
Stands full of unchecked worshippers
Like those idolaters of old?

The Blessed Virgin--blest she is
That does not make her Heaven's Queen!
Yet some are taught to worship her;
What else does all this teaching mean?

What she denied to the Mother of God she accorded (rather daringly, I
opine) to one Harriet, whose death and future are recorded in the
following lines:--

Declining like the setting sun
After a course divinely run,
I saw a maiden passing fair
Reposing on an easy chair.

A Bridegroom of celestial mien
Came forth and claimed her for His Queen;
One with His Father on His throne
She lives entirely His own.

Harrietolatry, I thought, was confined to the members of the defunct
Shelley Society. But every reader will feel the poignant truth of Mrs.
Farrer's view of the Church of England--truer to-day than it could have
been in the 'eighties:--

The Church of England--grand old ship--
Toss'd is on a troubled sea!
Her sails are rent, her decks are foul'd,
Mutiny on board must be.

The winds of discord howl around,
Wild disputers throw up foam,
From high to low she's beat about;
Frighten'd some who love her roam.

I do not know if the last word is intended for a pun, but I scarcely
think it is likely.

I would like to reconstruct Mrs. Farrer's home, with its stiff Victorian
chairs, its threaded antimacassars, its pictorial paper-weights, its wax
flowers under glass shades, and the charming household porcelain from the
Derby and Worcester furnaces. There must have been a sabbatic air of
comfort about the dining-room which was soothing. I can see the
engravings after Landseer: 'The Stag at Bay,' 'Dignity and Impudence'; or
those after Martin: 'The Plains of Heaven,' and 'The Great Day of His
Wrath'; and 'Blucher meeting Wellington,' after Maclise. I can see on
each side of the mirror examples of the art of Daguerre, which have
already begun to produce in us the same sentiment that we get from the
early Tuscans; and on the mantelpiece a photograph of Harriet in a plush
frame, the one touch of modernity in a room which was otherwise severely
1845. Then, on a bookshelf which hung above the old tea-caddy and cut-
glass sugar-bowl, Georgiana's library--'Line upon Line,' 'Precept upon
Precept,' 'Jane the Cottager,' 'Pinnock's S