to smell as sweetly under the shorter as the longer name, so
that we shall not enter into any Criticism condemnatory of the
change. This chapel is the successor, in a direct line, of the first
building ever erected in the Orchard. Its ancestor was placed on
precisely the same spot, in 1831. Those who raised it seceded from
the Wesleyan community, in sympathy with the individuals who retired
from the "old body" at Leeds, in 1828, and who adopted the name of
"Protestant Methodists." For a short time the Preston branch of
these Methodists worshipped in that mystic nursery of germinating
"isms" called Vauxhall-road Chapel; and in the year named they
erected in the Orchard a building for their own spiritual
improvement. It was a plain chapel outside, and mortally ugly
within. Amongst the preaching confraternity in the connexion it used
to be known as "the ugliest Chapel in Great Britain and Ireland." In
1834 a further secession of upwards of 20,000 from the Wesleyans
took place, under the leadership of the late Dr. Warren, of
Manchester. These secessionists called themselves the "Wesleyan
Association," and with them the "Protestant Methodists," including
those meeting in the Orchard Chapel, Preston, amalgamated. They also
adopted the name of their new companions. In 1857 the "Wesleyan
Association" coalesced with another large body of persons, who
seceded from the original Wesleyans in 1849, under the leadership of
the Rev. James Everett and others, and the two conjoined sections
termed themselves the "United Methodist Free Church." None of the
separations recorded were occasioned by any theological difference
with the parent society, but through disagreement on matters of
"government."

The ministers of the United Methodist Free Church body move about
somewhat after the fashion of the Wesleyan preachers. They first go
to a place for twelve months, and if they stay longer it has to be
through "invitation" from one of the quarterly meetings. As a rule,
they stop three or four years at one church, and then move off to
some new circuit, where old sermons come in, at times, conveniently
for new hearers. The various churches are ruled by "leaders"--men of
a deaconly frame of mind, invested with power sufficient to enable
them to rule the roost in ministerial matters, to say who shall
preach and who shall not, and to work sundry other wonders in the
high atmosphere of church government. The "members" support their
churches, fina