22 AN AMERICAN FARMER IN ENGLAND. 



and its furniture, and the style of the exercises, with what I 

 had seen and heard at the cathedral the previous Sunday ; yet 

 J could not but notice the marked resemblance between the 

 simple solemnity of manner and sincere unendeavouring tone 

 of the gentleman who conducted the ceremony of the commu 

 nion, and that of his robed and titled brother who performed 

 the same duty within those aweing walls. 



In the afternoon I went with one of the Brethren to the 

 union poor-house, which is a little out of the town. The 

 inmates, so far as I saw them, were nearly all aged persons, 

 cripples, or apparently half-witted, and it all appeared very 

 much like a hospital. The chilling neatness, bareness, order, 

 and precision, reminded me of the berth-deck of a man-of-war. 

 Among the sick was a young woman who had now for four 

 days refused to take food or to speak ; when broth was set 

 before her in our presence, she merely moaned and shook her 

 head, closed her eyes, and sank back upon her bed. Her 

 disease was a broken heart. A week ago her cottage was 

 destroyed by fire, and her child (illegitimate) burned to death 

 in it. 



At sunset we found much such a company strolling on the 

 common opposite the town as that we saw promenading the 

 walls at Chester last Sunday night. The shaded walks about 

 the castle were also thick with happy-looking, grateful-looking, 

 orderly men and women, boys and girls, superabundantly at 

 tended by healthy, sturdily-tottering babies. 



In the evening C. called on the Independent clergyman. 

 He spoke highly of the spiritual character of the Brethren, 

 but he evidently regarded them as rather wild and untract- 

 able abstractionists. They had drawn away several of the 

 leading members of his flock, and, in his observations upon 

 them, he possibly showed a little soreness on this account. He 

 continued on terms of friendly intercourse, however, with them. 



