ty or ugliness, some traits
of grace or godlessness, some features of excellence, dignity,
piety, or sham. There must be either a good deal of gilded
gingerbread or a great let of the genuine article, at our places of
worship. But whether there is or there is not, we have decided to
say something about the church and the chapel, the parson and the
priest, of each district in the town. This is a mere prologue, and
we shall but hint at the general theme "on this occasion."

Churches and chapels are great institutions in the land. Nobody
knows the exact time when the first was thought of; and it has not
yet transpired when the last will be run up. But this is certain, we
are not improving much in the make of them. The Sunday sanctums and
Sabbath conventicles of today may be mere ornate, may be more
flashy, and show more symptoms of polished bedizenment in their
construction; but three-fourths of them sink into dwarflings and
mediocrities when compared with the rare old buildings of the past.
In strength and beauty, in vastness of design and skill of
workmanship, in nobility of outline and richness of detail, the
religious fabrics of these times fall into insignificance beside
their grand old predecessors; and the manner in which they are cut
up into patrician and plebeian quarters, into fashionable coteries
for the perfumed portion of humanity, and into half-starved benches
with the brand of poverty upon them for the poor, is nothing to the
credit of anybody.

All the churches and chapels of the land may profess Christianity;
but the game of the bulk has a powerful reference to money. Those
who have got the most of the current coin of the realm receive the
blandest smile from the parson, the politest nod from the beadle,
the promptest attention from that strange mixture of piety and pay
called "the chapel-keeper;" those who have not got it must take what
they can get, and accept it with Christian resignation, as St. Paul
tells them. This may be all right; we have not said yet that it is
wrong; but it looks suspicious, doesn't it?--shows that in the arena
of conventional Christianity, as in the seething maelstrom of
ordinary life, money is the winner. Our parsons and priests, like
our ecclesiastical architecture and general church management, do
not seem to have improved upon their ancestors. Priests are not as
jolly as they once were. In olden days "holy fathers" could wear
horse-hair shirts and scarify their epidermis