and were crossing the little enclosure to the
porch. Doctor Topham strode at the head of his
family. He was one of the terrible powers of
the place; wore a white tie, like the clergymen
of the place; but was only a layman, an
ecclesiastical lawyer, vicar-general to the bishop—
surrogate, and what not—in short, a pompous
sour-looking pluralist of immense influence in
the place, from his relation to the secretary.

He was very tall and pompous, and carried
his umbrella on his shoulder, as a dragoon would
his sabre. He walked in advance of his family,
and seemed to approach the door of the cathedral
as if it were the door of his own house. Mr.
Tilney waited for him a little nervously. "How
d'ye do, Tilney?" said the great man, without
stopping. "They've not begun inside, I
suppose?"

Mr. Tilney was greatly gratified by this cordial
notice. "A very proud man," said he, looking
after him; "can do what he likes with the
government! He is coming to dine with us."

Mr. Tillotson went round the cold black area,
looking up when he was bidden in the direction
of the stick, and to the right, and to the right and
the left, when he was invited to do that. But he
had seen many foreign cathedrals of reputation
and of equal size—seen them glowing with colour,
and decoration, and warmth, and crowded from
the grand door at the bottom of the nave up to
the darker far end, where there was the white
cloud and indistinct white figures. This, of
course, could not have been where there were
backs of monsters' clothes-presses blocking up
the view. But he now saw, instead, the neat
marble tablets let into the wall to the memory of
the Treasurer of the County, with the stone
sideboard erected by the sorrowing militia officers
to their captain, and various marble ottomans
strewn about, among which the old knight,
shining like black bronze from the polish of time,
lying on his back, with his hands joined in the
old way, looked sadly out of place. And presently
he heard Dr. Bliss roaring and rumbling, but a
faint smothered and suppressed Dr. Bliss,
enclosed fast, and playing into an enclosure of
wardrobes.

Now, was Mr. Tillotson led devoutly and softly
into the pew where the family knelt, and placed
kneeling upon a hassock, and had a heavy book
thrust into his hand, without having even the
place found for him. Heads turned round, also
bonnets on the heads, to see who the Tilneys
had got with them, besides the officers regularly
secured, and who were more or less a drug. The
ladies and gentlemen of the town sat in tiers in
the oak stalls, and many a gay bonnet lay
humorously beside a "begging griffin."

Now, came in the procession, with the angelic
boys, the choristers, florid, ascetic, and seraphic,
all which shapes of expression were discovered
in bass, tenor, and counter-tenor faces. They all
scattered to their places with a resigned look, as
if they were professionally holy men. Then the
service set in, and then the sermon.

CHAPTER VIII. AFTER THE DEAN'S SERMON.

As Lord Rooksby's brother came in for his
three-quarters of an hour, the sun poured down
with unusual splendour, and swept across the
stalls where the Tilney family sat. Mr. Tillotson
saw that Mr. Tilney was asleep, with a fallen jaw,
and long gaunt nose; and this moment of fatal
unconsciousness betrayed to him Mr. Tilney's
real age. The "girls" were wakeful: perhaps
studying a row of bonnet-backs on the tier below
them. But, at the very end, the sunlight fell upon
a patch of gold almost as gorgeous as the old
transparent yellows in the panes high up in the
windows—that yellow hair which rested on the
pale white forehead, and soft composed
devotional face, which, with eyes cast down, was
accepting the dry ramblings of the confessor
who was brother to Lord Rooksby, as if he were
St. Augustine or Fénelon.

Mr. Tillotson's devotion was not warm, and
often and often his eyes travelled profanely to
that "Madonna" face, and his thoughts travelled
fast and speculated on it with a strange and a
fond interest. Looking back through the cold
November days of our life, we stop at some such
sunny Sunday mornings as these, when our
thoughts were as festive as the day—a Christmas
or an Easter—and were travelling from mere
buoyancy far away outside the walls of church
or cathedral.

But now Miss Augusta, stooping across her
neighbour, was whispering to Mr. Tillotson that
Dr. Fugle, the tenor, was going to begin the
"Anthem;" and Dr. Bliss, having securely got
in his mainsail from the storm, was piping most
softly and ravishingly. And Mr. Tillotson saw
just opposite to him, at the other side, a round
pink face with enormous whiskers, which was
now singing out of a little hole at the corner of
its mouth, but the face was kept up towards the
groining of the roof, and the eyes had a soft and
languishing air, as if they were cherubim's eyes.
So that Doctor Fugle, as he chanted that his
"soul panteth," seemed to be rapt and to have
soared away ecstatically. The sisters looked over
at Mr. Tillotson in delight, for this was one of
Fugle's best; though, in truth, the seraphim
was a rather old seraphim, and he supplied the
absence of the higher notes by skilful declamation.
Then Doctor Bliss "let go" the ropes and blocks,
and the winds rose again, and all the canons,
save the bass canons who ground their organs
in an earthly way, were seen celestially rapt,
chanting with resignation, with all their eyes
upturned to heaven. And then came Bliss again,
and the seraphic tenor canons went out languidly
in procession, quite indifferent to life after this
taste of heavenly communing, and the congregation
broke up with alacrity, and poured out of
the cathedral.

The family procession, too, came out, with the
gentlemen. The ladies were very voluble. "Did
you ever hear anything like Doctor Fugle? Such
an exquisite voice! At that part where he said,
'pan—teth—panteth,' I could have cried."