Wherefore I commence with information, which I trust will be interesting, as to the National Church in England. Don't be afraid of a sermon, for I am not going to preach to you here, although I may have that privilege elsewhere, and shall have something to say about preachers. I shall discuss no doctrinal or other subjects, on which we may differ. I shall not intrude within the borders of the spiritual life "the heart knoweth its own bitterness, and a stranger doth not intermeddle with its joy." I shall keep aloof from doubtful disputations, the mysteries of iniquity and of grace, confining my observations to those external aspects and historical facts, which, while they indicate, of course, the principles and motives of their existence, and may in themselves be admired or disliked, are no longer matters for discussion or controversy, but realities, which will enable you to understand our present status and aspirations, our strength and weakness, our hopes and fears, and then, if you will, to compare them with your own.

I speak that which I know, and testify that which I have seen, as one who has lived alongside, as it were, of the great revival of religion in the Church of England, a thankful witness of the transformation it has wrought. "It is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes."

Let me take you in imagination to the village in which I lived, and my fathers before me, so long as there are any records of the place, as it was fifty years ago. There stands the massive old church of grey stone with its ivy-mantled tower, some of it

six centuries old. The children, just let loose from school, are shouting and running, the young barbarians all at play, and

"Turning to mirth all things of earth,
As only boyhood can,"

over the graves of their ancestors. Suddenly there is a jubilant cry, "Here's Churchwarden's oss! let's make him flollop!" And the huge heavy agricultural quadruped, excited by shrill clamour, and pelted with sticks and caps, goes lumbering among the broken headstones, the mounds, and cavities, concealed by rank grass and weeds, and begins at once to flollop, and to fall.

Only one part of the sacred ground was comparatively quiet, the northern, sunless side, in which were buried the suicide and the unbaptized. Even in the daylight it was avoided, and though the pathway, which went through it, was to many the shorter route, it was rarely, and at night-time never, used.

It is told of a vicar, whose churchyard was sadly overcrowded, except on this northern side, that, while visiting a poor old woman, who was nigh unto death, and having first assured her that the aversion to sepulture in any particular portion of the ground, which had been all set apart and consecrated, was silly prejudice, fancy, and superstition, he besought her as a personal favour to himself, and as an example to others, to permit her interment in this unfrequented plot. The old lady took a few moments for consideration, and then made answer" Well, sir,

as you seem to think as one part of the churchyard is as good as another, and that it makes no difference where we be put, perhaps you'll gie us a lead." But he did not seem quite to grasp the argument.

Shall we look into the church, of all the buildings in the parish the dirtiest and most desolate. The walls, once a gay gamboge, have acquired from the damp and the drip a green and yellow melanchol The bats, which dwell in the rotten timbers of th roof, float silently to and fro; the impudent sparrov. twitters his disdain; the corpulent spider darts up his lift to his lair; and the church mouse, and the earwig, and the beetle, the moth, and all manners of flies, scared by our strange intrusion, are agitated by a sudden conviction that there's no place like home.

The font, never used for its sacred purpose, the babes being baptized at home in the yellow basin, generally associated with the porridge or the pudding, is filled with the broad ropes, by which coffins are let down into the grave, with an assortment of candle-ends, and a tin box containing the only instruments of ignition then in common use, the flint and the steel, which produced by quick attrition the spark, which, smouldering in the timber, set aflame the brimstone on the wooden match.

The altar was scantily draped with an ancient baize, patched and faded. I remember distinctly its only ornaments, the overcoat, hat, and whip of the curate, who had ridden five miles to his work.

The ground floor was covered with pews of all sizes and shapes, except where in damp and distant

corners a few of the old oak benches still remained, and the poor, like the publican, worshipped afar off. Diotrephes, the squire, loved to have the pre-eminence, and maintained it in a huge high quadrilateral, which occupied half the chancel, with table, and carpets, and fireplace, and soft seats, and comfortable corners, suggesting and inducing

"that repose,

Which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere."

Zeba and Zalmunna, the parson and the clerk, in their triple tier of boxes, with a few farmers, and the more prosperous parishioners, took the rest of the edifice in possession, except where a wooden gallery hid with obtrusive ugliness the exquisite proportions of the tall western arch, and held our village choir. These high wooden walls not only invited slumber from the sleepy, but a mischievous activity from the wide-awake. The boys got upon the seats, and peeping over, exchanged those little acts of personal intercourse, such as pulling the hair and pricking with pins, which seem to bring them such intense delight. I remember the confession of a very earnest and solemn preacher, that once, and once only, he had lost his self-command in the pulpit, and had astonished his hearers by the signs and sounds of irrepressible mirth. He saw one of two boys, who sat dos-a-dos in adjoining pews, taking a survey over the partition of his neighbour's hair, in colour of a brilliant red, then very slowly approximating his forefinger, as though he feared, but was constrained to pass, the fiery ordeal, then in the

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moment of contact withdrawing it with a painful rapidity, and putting it in his mouth to cool!

The services were few and frigid. The congregation took no audible part. The parish clerk made all the responses, sometimes with quaint interpolations and new versions of his own, as for example on the accession of Queen Victoria, he changed the masculine to the feminine prefix, and read with a loud voice," and blessed be the name of Her Majesty for ever, and all the earth shall be filled with Her Majesty, Amen, Amen."

And when the Archdeacon made his annual visitation at a neighbouring town for the admission, or swearing in, as it was termed, of the Churchwardens, one of this fraternity gave notice," that the Venerable the Archdeacon would attend on Thursday next at Southwell to swear at the Churchwardens."

The sermon, very rarely composed by the man who wrote it, was read in a monotonous formal tone, which expressed no anxious interest in the heart of the preacher and suppressed it in others. Enthusiasm was not regarded as genteel, and any abnormal excitement about such matters as the salvation of the soul was bad taste, and only fit for dissenters. There was a general sympathy with the complaint of the farmer's wife, though few expressed it so freely, "That young man we've got roars so loud that John canna sleep comfortable."

The occupants of the gallery were permitted to roar, because they had an absolute monopoly of the music, and because they were unanimous in the con