toral
candlestick which stands on one side. It is, when charged with a
full-sized candle, perhaps five feet ten high, and it has a very
patriarchal and decorous appearance--looks grave and authoritative,
and seems to think itself a very important affair. And it has a
perfect right to its opinion. We should like to see it in a
procession, with Zaccheus, the sacristian, carrying it. Three fine
paintings, which however seem to have lost their colour somewhat,
are placed in the particular part of the church we are now at. The
central one represents the "Adoration of the Magi," and was painted
and given by Mr. H. Taylor Bulmer, who formerly resided in Preston.
The second picture to the left is a representation of "Christ's
agony in the Garden;" and the third on the opposite side is "Christ
carrying the Cross." In front of the altar there is the usual lamp
with a crimson spirit flame, burning day and night, and reminding
one of the old vestal light, watched by Roman virgins, who were
whipped in the dark by a wrathful pontifex if they ever let it go
out. At the northern end of the church there is a large gallery,
with one of the neatest artistic designs in front of it we ever saw.
The side walls are surmounted with a chaste frieze, and running
towards the base are "stations" and statues of saints. A small altar
within a screen, surmounted with statuary, is placed on each side of
the sanctuary, and not far from one of them there is a bright
painting which looks well at a distance, but nothing extra two yards
off. It represents Christ preaching out of a boat to some Galileans,
amongst whom may be seen the Rev. Canon Walker. If the painting is
correct, the worthy canon has deteriorated none by age, for he seems
to look just as like himself now as he did eighteen hundred years
since, and to be not a morsel fonder of spectacles and good snuff
now than he was then. His insertion, however, into this picture, was
a whim of the artist, whose cosmopolitan theory led him to believe
that one man is, as a rule, quite as good as another, and that
paintings are always appreciated best when they refer to people whom
you know.

There are three of those very terrible places called confessionals
at St. Augustine's, and one day not so long since we visited all of
them. It is enough for an ordinary sinner to patronise one
confessional in a week, or a month, or a quarter of a year, and then
go home and try to behave himself. But we went to three