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 we have in America," and another author (the biographer of Whitefield) called it "a grand church resembling one of the new Churches in London." That building was constructed in 1723 and was the leading church in the State until its destruction in the great fire of 1835. The architectural proportions and beauty of the present St. Philip's Church,—with its lofty steeple reaching to a height of nearly two hundred feet, from which shines at night a beacon light to mariners far away at sea,—"though perhaps peculiar to themselves, command the instant admiration of every beholder, professional or otherwise."

No visitor to Charleston fails to visit St. Michael's Church, the finest piece of colonial ecclesiastical architecture in the South, and which was first opened for divine service in 1761. The story of its chime of bells attracts the stranger and makes the bells doubly dear to all born within the shadow of the lofty tower. They never jangled out of tune, except on the eventful night of August 31, 1886, when the steeple was swayed by the earthquake. In 1782, Major Traille, of the Royal Artillery, took possession of the bells as spoils of war and sent them back to England, but the next