sat "the music"--a
clarionet, flute, violin, and 'cello. The clerk gave out the "Twentieth
Psalm of David," and the fiddlers tuned for a moment and then played at
once. Then they struck up, and the clerk, absolutely alone, in a
majestic voice which swayed up and down without regard to time or tune,
sang it through like the braying of an ass; not a soul else joined in;
the farmers amused and smiling at each other. Such scenes were
quite usual.

In Cornwall affairs were worse. In one church the curate-in-charge had
to be chained to the altar rails while he read the service, as he had a
harmless mania, which made him suddenly flee from the church if his own
activities were for an instant suspended, as, for example, by a
response. The churchwarden, a farmer, kept the padlock-key in his pocket
till the service was safely over, and then released the imprisoned
cleric. At another Cornish church the vicar's sister used to read the
lessons in a deep bass voice.

Congregations were often very sparse. Few people attended, and perhaps
none on weekdays, unless the clerk was in his place. On such occasions
the parson was tempted to emulate the humour of Dean Swift, who at the
first weekday service that he held after his appointment to the living
of Laracor, in the diocese of Meath, after waiting for some time in vain
for a congregation, began the service, addressing his clerk, "Dearly
beloved Roger, the scripture moveth you and me in sundry places," etc.

When the Psalms were read, you heard the first verse read in a
mellifluous and cultured voice. Perhaps it was the evening of the
twenty-eighth day of the month, and you listened to the sacred words of
Psalm cxxxvii., "By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept, when we
remembered thee, O Sion." Then followed a bellow from a raucous throat:
"Has fur ur 'arp, we 'anged 'em hup hupon the trees that hare thurin."
And then at the end of the Lord's Prayer, after every one had finished,
the same voice came drowsily cantering in: "For hever and hever,
Haymen." Sometimes we heard, "Let us sing to the praise and glory of God
the 'undred and sixtieth Psalm--_'Ymn 'ooever."_ The numbers of the
hymns or Psalms were scored on the two sides of a slate. Sometimes the
functionary in the gallery forgot to turn the slate after the first
hymn. "Let us sing," began the clerk--(pause)--"Turn the slate, will
you, if you please, Master Scroomes?" he continued, addressing the
neglectful person.

Th