her large or diminutive,
whether dressed in corduroy or smoothest, blackest broad cloth, in
silk or Surat cotton, must unravel the sins they have committed.
This confession must be a hard sort of job, we know, for some
people; but we are not going to enter upon a discussion of its
merits or demerits. Only this may be said, that if there was full
confession at every place of worship in Preston the parsons would
never get through their work. Every day, from an early hour in the
morning until a late period of the evening, St. Wilfrid's is open to
worshippers; and you may see them, some with smiling faces, and some
with very elongated ones, going to or coming from it constantly.
Like Tennyson's stream, they evince symptoms of constant movement
and the only conclusion we can fairly come to is that the mass of
them are singularly in earnest. There are not many Protestants--
neither Church people, nor Dissenters, neither quiescent Quakers nor
Revivalist dervishes--who would be inclined to go to their religious
exercises before breakfast, and if they did, some of them, like the
old woman who partook of Sacrament in Minnesota, would want to know
what they were going to "get" for it. On Sundays, as on week days,
the same business--laborious as it looks to outsiders--goes on.
There are several services, and they are arranged for every class--
for those who must attend early, for those who can't, for those who
won't, and for those who stir when the afflatus is upon them. There
are many, however, who are regular attendants, soon and late, and if
precision and continuity will assist them in getting to heaven, they
possess those auxiliaries in abundance.

The congregation attending on a Sunday is a mixed one--rags and
satins, moleskins and patent kids, are all duly represented; and it
is quite a study to see their wearers put in an appearance. Directly
after entrance reverential genuflections and holy-water dipping are
indulged in. Some of the congregation do the business gracefully;
others get through it like the very grandfather of awkwardness. The
Irish, who often come first and sit last, are solemnly whimsical in
their movements. The women dip fast and curtsy briskly; the men turn
their hands in and out as if prehensile mysticism was a saving
thing, and bow less rapidly but more angularly than the females;
then you have the slender young lady who knows what deportment and
reverence mean; who dips quietly, and makes a partial desc