154 AN AMERICAN FARMER IN ENGLAND. 



part of the edifice (in the centre of the cross) which is fitted 

 up inconveniently for public worship. 



It is a small, narrow apartment, having galleries, the occu 

 pants of which are hidden behind a beautiful open-work carv 

 ed wood screen, and furnished below with three or four tiers of 

 pews (slips), and a few benches. Under the organ loft were 

 elevated armed seats, which were occupied indiscriminately 

 by the unofficiating clergy and military officers in uniform : the 

 governor of the castle ; Lord Grosvenor (as &quot; colonel of the 

 militia,&quot;) Lord de Tapley, and others. Stationing soldiers 

 among the canons, it struck us, was well enough for a joke, 

 but as part of a display of worshipping the God of peace, 

 very objectionable. It is one of those incongruities that a 

 state church must be constantly subject to.* 



Half way between these elevated seats and the chancel 

 was the reading desk and pulpit, and on each side of this the 

 choristers were seated. Several persons rose to offer us their 

 seats as we approached them, and when we were seated, 

 placed prayer-books before us. The pews were all furnished 

 with foot-stools, or hassocks, of straw rope made up like a 

 straw bee-hive. 



Much of the service which in our churches is read, was 

 sung, or, as they say, intoned. Intoning is what in school 

 children is called &quot; sing-song 1 reading, only the worst kind, 

 or most exaggerated sing-songing. I had never heard it be 

 fore in religious service, except in a mitigated way from some 

 of the old-fashioned Quaker and Methodist female exhorters, 



* I remember when I was a child, seeing on the Sunday preceding the 

 first Monday in May the atonual training day in one of the most old-fash 

 ioned villages in Connecticut, the officers of the militia come into the meet 

 ing-house in their uniforms. The leader of the choir was a corporal, and the 

 red stripes on his pantaloons, the red facings and bell-buttons of his coat, 

 as he stood up alone, and pitched the psalm tunes, was impressed irre 

 trievably on my mind. 



