en's, than _ex
cathedra_ as of office and of duty.

It would be a fair exemplification of the stolid prowess of a Quixote
tilting against, yea, stouter foes than wind-mills, were I to have
commenced with an attack upon external church architecture: this topic
let us leave to the fraternity of builders; only asking by what rule of
taste an obelisk-like spire, is so often stuck upon the roof of a
Grecian temple, and by what rule of convenience gigantic columns so
commonly and resolutely sentinel the narrowest of exits and entrances.
Let us be more commonly contented, as well we may, with our grand,
appropriate, and impressive indigenous kind of architecture--Gothic,
Norman, and Saxon: the temple of Ephesus was not suitable to be fitted
up with galleries, nor was the Parthenon meant to be surmounted by a
steeple. But all this is useless gossip.

Similarly Quixotic would be any tirade against pews, those pet
strongholds of snug exclusive selfishness; bad in principle, as
perpetually separating within wooden walls members of the same
communion; unwholesome in practice, confining in those antre-like
parallelograms the close-pent air; unsightly in appearance, as any one
will testify, whose soul is exalted above the iron beauties of a plain
conventicle; expensive in their original formation, their fittings and
repairs; and, when finished, occupying perhaps one-fourth of the area of
a church already ten times too small for its neighbouring population.
Fixed benches, or a strong muster of chairs, or such modes of
congregational accommodation as public meeting-rooms and ordinary
lecture-rooms present, seems to me more consistent and more convenient.
But all this again is vain talking--a very empty expenditure of words;
we must be satisfied with churches as they are; and, after all, let me
readily admit that steeples are imposing in the distance, and of use as
belfries; (probably of like intent were the strange columnar towers of
Ireland;) and with regard to pews, let me confess that practice finds
perfect what theory condemns as wrong, so--let these things pass.

Nevertheless, let me begin upon the threshold with the extortionate and
abominable race of pew-women, beadles, clerks, vergers, bell-ringers,
and other fee-hungry ravens hovering around and about almost every
hallowed precinct: pray you, reform all that, and copy railroad
companies in forbidding those begrudged gratuities to mendicant and
ever-grumbling menials. Next,