as they read their respective
portions of the venerable liturgy, would roll many a portentous word
descriptive of the wondrous works of the Most High.

_Rector_. Thou didst divide the sea, through thy power: thou brakest the
heads of the dragons in the waters.

_Philoh_. Thou smotest the heads of Leviathan in pieces: and gavest him
to be meat for the people in the wilderness.

_Rector_. Thou broughtest out fountains, and waters out of the hard
rocks: thou driedst up mighty waters.

_Philoh_. The day is thine, and the night is thine: thou hast prepared
the light and the sun.

Peace to your memories, dignified rector, and yet more dignified
clerk!--by this time ye are probably gone to your long homes, and your
voices are no longer heard sounding down the aisles of the venerable
church--nay, doubtless, this has already long since been the fate of him
of the sonorous 'Amen!'--the one of the two who, with all due respect to
the rector, principally engrossed my boyish admiration--he, at least, is
scarcely now among the living! Living! why, I have heard say that he blew
a fife--for he was a musical as well as a Christian professor--a bold
fife, to cheer the Guards and the brave Marines, as they marched with
measured step, obeying an insane command, up Bunker's height, whilst the
rifles of the sturdy Yankees were sending the leaden hail sharp and thick
amidst the red-coated ranks; for Philoh had not always been a man of
peace, nor an exhorter to turn the other cheek to the smiter, but had
even arrived at the dignity of a halberd in his country's service before
his six-foot form required rest, and the gray-haired veteran retired,
after a long peregrination, to his native town, to enjoy ease and
respectability on a pension of 'eighteenpence a day'; and well did his
fellow-townsmen act, when, to increase that ease and respectability, and
with a thoughtful regard for the dignity of the good church service, they
made him clerk and precentor--the man of the tall form and of the audible
voice, which sounded loud and clear as his own Bunker fife. Well, peace
to thee, thou fine old chap, despiser of dissenters, and hater of
papists, as became a dignified and High-Church clerk; if thou art in thy
grave, the better for thee; thou wert fitted to adorn a bygone time, when
loyalty was in vogue, and smiling content lay like a sunbeam upon the
land, but thou wouldst be sadly out of place in these days of cold
philosophic latitudinari