besplashed garments go to work busily; and
within a short period, the temple is given
back to its congregation, spick, span, and
resplendent.

On this cheerless background, the rows of
old black oak benches, ranged in
amphitheatre shape between the pillars (dirty and
rickety they were), the gaunt pulpit, with
its prodigious overhanging sounding-board,
threatening to fall and crush the congregation;
the sharp verger and pew- opening
tribe, noisily rattling their huge bundles of
keys, and literally touting for stray
worshippers; the tall attenuated organ, fitted
funereally with black and silver mountings;
the swollen Dutch Bibles; the stray tomb,
here and there; all these things stood out
upon the bald white background, making a
cold and dismal show. This will be pretty
much about the complexion of every church,
orthodox and dissenting, down among the
Dutchmen, into which it will be the inquiring
traveller's fate to enter.

One fine evening—it was on a Wednesday
—after having gotten, by some accident, into
an alley entirely in the hands of the Israelites,
and after long struggling for some mode of
extrication, and after cruel usage by the unsavoury
men and women of that tribe, all shrieking,
hustling, and importunately obtruding their
wares, all gesticulating and wrangling: with
the light from stray lamps and candles falling
on an ivory Hebrew conformation, bending
over a stall, with quite a Rembrandtish effect
—after buffeting vainly with these unclean
billows, I was at last set free, and found
myself in a sort of lonely little yard, hard by to
a bridge, opposite a large open door, like the
entrance to a vault. Here were all manner
of little structures, laid up, as it were, against
the wall, round about the open door. Entering
cautiously, it came to be the old
whitewashed waste over again, the heavy, clumsyish
pillars, and huge vaulting, as before—only
being now dimly lighted with a few candles
up and down, the white pillars cast awful,
straggling shadows, and got lost afar off in a
great, dark void. There was a terrible solitude
in the place, no one being present,
beyond the touting vergers, still rattling their
keys vainly, through pressure of the old
habit. In ten minutes, say these gentlemen,
service will commence, and the congregation
arrive: which last remark is by way of
encouragement to the inquirer, whose
lineaments wear a puzzled expression. Presently
enters, first old woman shuffling in sabots;
after a decent interval, first old man. j
To them, in course of time, enter three more
older women, with pendants of the other sex.
And, after a short delay—the congregation,
now amounting to full eight or ten persons—
an ancient minister appears suddenly in the
pulpit, and the service commences.

Dreary and undevotional the whole scene,
looking at the gaunt howling wilderness
itself, or at the ancient minister whose feeble
accents barely travelled beyond the circuit
of his own pulpit. Dreary and undevotional
it was to note the touting vergers afar off
on remote benches, fast bound in slumber, and
pillowed on a Dutch Book of Prayer. Dreary,
certainly, but undevotional was it, to catch
sight of, through an opening in the wall, a
snug kitchen and blazing fire, with
something simmering on the hob, and housewife
bustling about, intent on supper. Homestead,
no doubt, of slumbering verger! which being
mere conjecture, grows into positive certainty,
as the housewife issues forth, bearing a large
tray, laden with tea equipage and steaming
things, taking her way across the church, in
the rear of the pulpit. On which a remote
verger is seen to lift his head, and withdraw
in a gentle and unassuming manner, wishing
not to disturb the congregation. Dreary,
certainly, but more devotional in its intent,
if not effect, was when all the old men and
women lifted up their voices together, and
gave out a hymn in feeble and quavering
accents. With certain relief, however, in the
famous old organ set up centuries ago, and
which now proclaimed itself in flowing
tones, mellowed by years into rich and
exquisite sweetness. Needless to say how the
cracked aud quavering voices were drowned
and swallowed up, and swept away down the
long aisle, among the whitewash pillars, in at
the warm kitchen whence came the verger's
tea, and back again by way of the whitewash
clouds, and the high vaulting. Great, soul-
stirring, satisfying sounds! Worth an hour
of solitude and cracked voices! Glorious,
too, the prospect of the great instrument
itself, rising with stateliness, from marble
gallery, with bunches of glittering pipes,
crowded together, in clumps, and bound in
silver fasces, until lost overhead in wild
exfoliation, in griffins, and grotesque monsters;
with its supplement gathering of pipes,
detached and hanging over the gallery in front,
like the heavy poop of an old Spanish galleon.
Altogether, well worthy of being removed
and set up in a corner of a cathedral piece
from the hand of David Roberts, R.A., and
most famous master.

It went to rest at last. The vergers dozed,
and the ancient minister piped and chattered
feebly, as before, all for the span of a good
hour and a half. Finally, he tottered from
his pulpit as he came, the service ended, and
the aged elements of the congregation shuffled
away. Who the ancient minister was—he
bore a skull-cap, like an old Calvinist
portrait—I never cared to inquire. Perhaps, I
had been hearkening to Spyker, or to Meulen,
or to some pillar of the Presbytery. Who
shall tell?