CHURCH AND DISSENT IN ENGLAND. 323 



it is essentially a huge, amorphous, loosely-rolling mass 

 of congregational units, the rector king in his own 

 castle, the parish a little realm in itself only vaguely 

 related to other similar realms. Religious Dissent in 

 England he believed to have sunk wholly into politi- 

 cal Dissidence. Alliance between religion and politics 

 always excited his jealousy, and the time when he 

 visited England was perhaps unfavourable for under- 

 standing the character and estimating the prospects 

 of English Nonconformity. The Puritan watchwords 

 had fossilized; but they had hardly yet visibly begun 

 to be formed into a concrete for the foundation of 

 Free Churches. 



It is impossible not to see that Miller's heart warmed 

 to England every day he continued within her borders. 

 He was surprised with the frankness, the ready hospitality 

 and generosity of the people. The fact clearly is, broad 

 as was his accent and plain his garb, that he had in 

 England as elsewhere an irresistible charm for every one 

 who came near him. The old lady who, after a chat in 

 a railway carriage, astonished him by an invitation to 

 visit her, had perceived in that little time that he was 

 gentle and good. Readers of the First Impressions 

 will recollect the Temperance Coffee-House of Dudley, 

 with its eight-year-old orator, who savagely denounced 

 every one that tasted wine or strong drink. No preface, 

 therefore, is required to the following, with which I have 

 been favoured by an intelligent correspondent : ' It 

 was about 1849 that I arrived one afternoon in Dudley, 

 and took up my abode in the Temperance Coffee- 

 House there. It was a very unpretending hostelry, 

 but clean and comfortable. The thing that soon 

 arrested me was that though I had never before been 

 in this town, yet the tile-paved kitchen, the elderly 



