was young, and perhaps retain a tenderness for old abuses, and, like
George Eliot, have a lingering liking for nasal clerks and top-booted
clerics, and sigh for the departed shades of vulgar errors.

Then and now--the contrast is great. Then the hideous Georgian
"three-decker" reared its monstrous form, blocking out the sight of the
sanctuary; immense pews like cattle-pens filled the nave. The woodwork
was high and panelled, sometimes richly carved, as at Whalley Church,
Lancashire, where some pews have posts at the corners like an
old-fashioned four-posted bed. Sometimes two feet above the top of the
woodwork there were brass rods on which slender curtains ran, and were
usually drawn during sermon time in order that the attention of the
occupants of the pew might not be distracted from devout meditations on
the preacher's discourse--or was it to woo slumber? A Berkshire dame
rather admired these old-fashioned pews, wherein, as she naively
expressed it, "a body might sleep comfortable without all the parish
knowin' on it."

It was of such pews that Swift wrote in his _Baucis and Philemon_:

"A bedstead of the antique mode,
Compact of timber many a load,
Such as our ancestors did use
Was metamorphosed into pews;
Which still their ancient nature keep
By lodging folks disposed to sleep."

The squire's pew was a wondrous structure, with its own special
fire-place, the fire in which the old gentleman used to poke vigorously
when the parson was too long in preaching. It was amply furnished, this
squire's pew, with arm-chairs and comfortable seats and stools and
books. Such a pew all furnished and adorned did a worthy clerk point out
to the witty Bishop of Oxford, Bishop Wilberforce, with much pride and
satisfaction. "If there be ought your lordship can mention to mak' it
better, I'm sure Squire will no mind gettin' on it."

The bishop, with a merry twinkle in his eye, turned round to the vicar,
who was standing near, and maliciously whispered:

"A card table!"

Such comfortable squires' pews still exist in some churches, but
"restoration" has paid scanty regard to old-fashioned notions and ideas,
and the squire and his family usually sit nowadays on benches similar to
those used by the rest of the congregation.

Then the choir sat in the west gallery and made strange noises and sang
curious tunes, the echoes of which we shall try to catch. No organ then
pealed forth its reverent tones