Page:Letters from England.djvu/95

 tant sacristans are dourer than the Catholic ones and are just as addicted to tips as the Italian sacristans, except that—being gentlemen—the tips they get must be bigger; that the Reformation accomplished a very swinish piece of work when it knocked off the heads of statues and removed pictures and other pagan idolatries from the churches. As a result the English cathedrals are bare and strange, as if nobody had been placed in charge of them. And what is worse, in the middle of the chief nave there is an enclosed choir for the parsons, ministrants and the élite of the diocese; the rest of the people are seated below and see nothing but the more or less carved walls of the choir and the back of the organ; the chief nave is thus thoroughly spoilt, the whole of the space is cut into two; never have I seen anything so absurd. But as they are still singing something there in the choir, I must arise and depart.

Ely, Ely, lama sabachtanil You betrayed me, Ely, dead town, lying at the foot of a