I may as well then briefly inform them that it is a suburb
of London, not far from Islington and the New Cattle Market. Holloway
belongs to the Dissenting part of London. The metropolis is cut up into
sections:--Quakers congregate in Tottenham, and Edmonton, and Stoke
Newington; Jews in Houndsditch; the Low Church party is very strong in
Clapham; at the east, down by the river, there is an immense number of
Baptists; in that large district, known at election times as the Tower
Hamlets, Dissenting chapels are plentiful as blackberries, while in the
more fashionable districts of Chelsea and Brompton you will hardly find
one. The philosopher of Malmesbury (Sir W. Molesworth could have shown
you the passage in the Leviathan) argues that a man should always be of
the religion of his country, and thus is it these sects have become
hereditary in their respective localities. You never hear of Puseyism in
the Tower Hamlets; you might as soon expect to find the Italian Opera
there as a St. Barnabas. Almost all the Dissenting families of London
have been born, brought up, and gathered to their fathers in one
locality. To this day the Dissenters of London are buried on almost the
very spot where De Foe wrote his satires, and Dr. Watts his hymns.

In spite, however, of this intuitive faith in the past, a faith no logic,
no mental illumination, can root out or destroy, dissent has its new
chapels and new men. Of these latter the Rev. A. J. Morris is one.
People who read Mr. Ruskin, and talk sentimentally about architecture--a
practice very rare among architects themselves--will see in Mr. Morris's
chapel something of the character of the man. It is new, but still it
appropriates to itself what is graceful and useful in the past. For
instance, it has more of an Episcopalian character than dissenting
chapels at the time of its erection generally had. Up to that time
dissenters had prided themselves on the uncomely and unpoetical aspect of
the places in which they met for public worship. Your dissenting chapel
was generally a square, built of the ugliest red brick, and rendered
hideous internally by square deal boxes, called pews, in which the people
sat under a common-place divine, generally as plain as the place. Such
was the meeting-house, as it was termed in the hallowed days of dissent,
in the good old times. The whole affair was an abomination to men of
taste. Mr. Morris has introduced a great reform--he has abolishe