ildhood, and whose existence,
much as it had then been to him, he had till this moment quite
forgotten. Where the 'New Sabbath' had kept itself all these years--why
that sound and hearty melody had disappeared from all the cathedrals,
parish churches, minsters and chapels-of-ease that he had been
acquainted with during his apprenticeship to life, and until his ways
had become irregular and uncongregational--he could not, at first,
say. But then he recollected that the tune appertained to the old
west-gallery period of church-music, anterior to the great choral
reformation and the rule of Monk--that old time when the repetition of
a word, or half-line of a verse, was not considered a disgrace to an
ecclesiastical choir.

Willing to be interested in anything which would keep him out-of-doors,
Somerset dismounted from the stile and descended the hill before him, to
learn whence the singing proceeded.

II.

He found that it had its origin in a building standing alone in a field;
and though the evening was not yet dark without, lights shone from the
windows. In a few moments Somerset stood before the edifice. Being just
then en rapport with ecclesiasticism by reason of his recent occupation,
he could not help murmuring, 'Shade of Pugin, what a monstrosity!'

Perhaps this exclamation (rather out of date since the discovery that
Pugin himself often nodded amazingly) would not have been indulged in
by Somerset but for his new architectural resolves, which caused
professional opinions to advance themselves officiously to his
lips whenever occasion offered. The building was, in short, a
recently-erected chapel of red brick, with pseudo-classic ornamentation,
and the white regular joints of mortar could be seen streaking its
surface in geometrical oppressiveness from top to bottom. The roof was
of blue slate, clean as a table, and unbroken from gable to gable;
the windows were glazed with sheets of plate glass, a temporary iron
stovepipe passing out near one of these, and running up to the height of
the ridge, where it was finished by a covering like a parachute. Walking
round to the end, he perceived an oblong white stone let into the wall
just above the plinth, on which was inscribed in deep letters:--

Erected 187-,

AT THE SOLE EXPENSE OF

JOHN POWER, ESQ., M.P.

The 'New Sabbath' still proceeded line by line, with all the emotional
swells and cadences that had of old characteri