Page:First impressions of England and its people.djvu/73

 Rows of grotesque heads look down into the nave from the spandrels: some twist their features to the one side of the face, some to the other; some wink hard, as if exceedingly in joke; some troll out their tongue; some give expression to a lugubrious mirth, others to a ludicrous sorrow. In the choir,—of course, a still holier part of the edifice than the nave,—the sculptor seems to have let his imagination altogether run riot. In one compartment there sits, with a birch over his shoulder, an old fox, stern of aspect as Goldsmith's schoolmaster, engaged in teaching two cubs to read. In another, a respectable-looking boar, elevated on his hind legs, is playing on the bag-pipe, while his hopeful family, four young pigs, are dancing to his music behind their trough. In yet another, there is a hare, contemplating with evident satisfaction a boiling pot, which contains a dog in a fair way of becoming tender. But in yet another the priestly designer seems to have lost sight of prudence and decorum altogether: the chief figure in the piece is a monkey administering extreme unction to a dying man, while a party of other monkeys are plundering the poor sufferer of his effects, and gobbling up his provisions. A Scotch Highlander's faith in the fairies is much less a reality now than it has been; but few Scotch Highlanders would venture to take such liberties with their neighbors the "good people," as the old ecclesiastics of Manchester took with the services of their religion.

It is rather difficult for a stranger in such a place to follow with strict attention the lesson of the day. To the sermon, however, which was preached in a surplice, I found it comparatively easy to listen. The Sabbath—a red-letter one—was the twice famous St. Bartholomew's day, associated in the history of Protestantism with the barbarous massacre of the French Huguenots, and in the history of Puritanism with the