before the priest's cowl. In such structures, too, the spark of learning was kept alive-the still glowing embers of the lore of dead tongues, were there preserved to be afterwards kindled into the blaze of living literature. Around their solemn towers rose towns and cities-within their walls shone the grand ecclesiastical pomp of the old faith. Those massive pillars-those echoing roofs-what sights they have seen! The gorgeous ritual of the old faith breathing forth its tranquillising powers over the mailed and robed warriors and dames, whose sounding titles, and deeds of bravery or of cruelty, make history a romance. These timehonoured minsters tell all this. They are the glorious memorials of a past time—a past race with their past habits of thought and of action-yet appealing to thoughts that die not-demonstrators of a truth which is eternal !

And even considered merely as works of art, our cathedrals should be sacred. What grand ideas are carved in their sculptured towers-what daring minds planned their vast dimensions-what patient perseverance wrought out the great conception! The architect designed-the painter drew-the sculptor carved-art in all her phases came to pile the perfect whole. The enthusiastic devotion of men, nothing if not religious, hallowed it. Barbarous nobles and their adherents spared it-the lowly of the land trusted in it. And in these our times, cathedrals remain-most speaking evidence of a great and a remarkable stage of our mental and physical progress-vast, solemn, and sublime !

And these are the places to obtain access to which a paltry sum is demanded. These great national temples are the petty marts in which little-minded churchmen-oh how different from the vast souls which gave these structures being!-use their small powers to exact small fees. Our religion is not a money-getting religion —but its ministers are a money-getting priesthood. They show naves and choirs, aisles and chancels, as a housekeeper shows the great hall and the blue parlour, the library and the old kitchen━ only the housekeeper generally trusts for recompense to your spontaneous liberality-the more wary churchman exhibits his fretted vaults," and makes play his "dim religious light fixed rate per head.

66

The pious man wishes to meditate solemn things in a solemn place. Let him sound a prelude by chinking copper ;-the lover of old art wishes to examine the harmony of pillar, the grace of buttress he must pay for his peeping; the thinking man wishes

to pass an hour amid things telling of old times, sanctified by old story-and, the verger's fee satisfied, he may. So well is the thing frequently combined, that every particular object of interest has its particular price. You could not buy everything in the shop for the price of one thing. You cannot see the nave at aisle price; you cannot mount the turret-having only paid the ground floor rent; so much more to see-to think of-to revere-so much more to pay! 'Tis the old cry, in more decorous language, upon a graver occasion. But the philosophy is the same of the churchman in his palace and the juggler in the street-" One penny more and up goes the donkey!

And in one of our cathedral-abbeys lie buried a mighty host of illustrious dead—the poets and painters-the great writers who have made our literature the glorious thing it is—the heroes we have produced-the statesmen who have made Britain famous; to the " haunted holy ground" where these lie buried, a gratis admittance has been grudgingly accorded. But other tombs are not so cheaply seen. The graves of the Tudors and Plantagenets -of Mary and of Elizabeth, the last resting-place of a long line of English monarchs, is exhibited-like over-fatted oxen or vulgar curiosities at so much per head. Edward the Confessor! Elizabeth would not your bones rattle in your coffins did you know that the tombs wherein you sleep your death-sleep, are made counters over which to chaffer for the price of a glimpse of your resting-place?

Not far hence, too, flourished, until very lately, a wax-work show. Why not have made the thing complete? Why not have erected swings and merry-go-rounds, and got a caravan of dwarfs and a brass band? The speculation would have paid, perhaps. Think of a fair in an abbey! Richardson's in the Poet's Corner. Mrs. Farley and the wax-work-in addition to the original clockin Henry VIIth's Chapel. Perhaps people would have cried out. Sacrilege-profanation, would have been exclaimed. Pshaw, cathedral authorities! ye are not thin-skinned about such trifles. We know you. Beneath the surplice lies the breeches-pocket,

and it at least ye reverence.

To the abbey and the cathedrals of this land the people of the land have a right of access. Abroad, such structures are open to all. Poverty there does not prevent the devotee from kneeling in the fane. As religion was meant for all, cathedrals were made for all. Among the other monopolies we are saddled with, is

Is the right of entering

there to be a monopoly of devotion? into sacred precincts-the hope of being influenced by that softening spirit of veneration and awe which dwells in such solemn old temples-the very genius of the place to be permitted only to those who can pay for the luxuries as well as the necessaries of life? We have all our contemplative seasons. L'Allegro may sadden into Il Penseroso. We would sometimes change bright sunshine for that which comes sombred through "storied windows richly dight." We would sometimes change the merry clang of every-day music for the "full mouthed organ's" pealing; but at the cathedral gate lie ensconced the myrmidons of deans and chapters, like Custom-house officers, to take care that nothing shall pass there until the claims of the church tariff have been duly cared for.

Most miserable in all senses is the pittance thus wrung forth. The amount it produces must be as paltry as the policy which imposes it. Strangers from foreign lands sneer at it, and at us for permitting it. Cathedral pennies are instanced as a specimen of our powers of turning anything, sacred or profane, into money,of that mercenary propensity we are so often charged with. We earnestly trust that the time is fast coming when this foul abuse will be done away with.-When Religion will be purged from this petty meanness.- -When the fanes to the Deity shall be no longer mere show-places to make money of, and to take money in.

As in days of yore, the money-changers have established themselves in the temple-as in days of yore they should be driven out. Let not the purse be the passport to the church. To sell entrance there is to sell what all should have without buying-it is degrading religion, and its ministers, and its most holy places. If anywhere, let man be equal in the house of the Creator of man. Ill-gotten is the gain made of cathedral tollsmost filthy of all filthy lucre.

Were change demanded for certain thirty pieces of silver, we cannot help thinking-it might be appropriately furnished out of

66

Cathedral Pennies."

A. R. B.

424

IMPRESSIONS OF A LATE TRIAL FOR MURDER.

It happened that on Friday, the 12th of last month, I had an appointment with a gentleman holding a high civic office, and not finding him at his residence I was directed to follow him to the Old Bailey. Having transacted my business, he politely asked me if I should like to see the prisoner then on his trial. After a moment's hesitation I assented, and was promptly shown into a seat from which I could see every part of, and nearly every person in the court.

I mention this to show that it was from no deliberate wish that

I was present at a trial for murder. I was there purely by accident; and I could not help reflecting while taking my seat that, five minutes before, I had no more idea of witnessing this tragedy of real life than I had of committing a crime myself. Full of such thoughts I looked round the court, and the impression it made upon me was far less painful than I could possibly have anticipated. My attention was naturally first directed to the chief actor in the scene the accused. To my knowledge I had never before beheld a man strongly tainted with a suspicion of murder. On looking at this man, my half-formed preconceptions of a being so suspected were completely overset. With crimes of violence one is apt to associate manifestations of ability to perpetrate it; thews, sinews, and bodily prowess. This person, on the contrary, had a slight frame; well knit, it is true, but betokening little physical strength. Again, it is usual to look in the countenance for outward and visible signs of violent passions frequently in operation. When a murderer is mentioned, the face your imagination pictures is coarse and strongly marked; but this young man's countenance expressed mildness and gentleness, not in an ordinary, but in an unusual degree. His complexion was fair and slightly pockmarked, his eyes somewhat inexpressive, his hair black, and worn thickly, though it was carefully arranged. The shape of his head completely contradicts the theory of phrenologists. The destructive passions they say reside in the back of the head; but Hocker's skull (for it was that celebrated criminal who was on his trial) was particularly narrow in that part, the distance between

His countenance expressed no show firmness; it was indiffer

the back of each ear being small. emotion whatever; neither did it ence!—of all others, the expression least to be expected from a man in his situation. In short, he looked as much unlike a murderer, or a human being awaiting the issue of his own life or death, as the most listless auditor in court.

When my attention was from time to time withdrawn from the prisoner to contemplate the rest of the scene, my previous notions of its extreme solemnity were equally modified. Within the dock there is a seat with a small desk before it, for, I suppose, one of the officials of the court. During a portion of the trial an individual comfortably established himself there, not to be near the prisoner for the satisfaction of watching the demeanour of a person in his awful situation, as many other spectators would have done, but-to read the newspaper! There he sat dallying over the ordinary records of every-day life, to pass away the time till it was decided whether his next neighbour should be hanged or not! This formed, in my mind, one of the most extraordinary contrasts in the whole proceedings. It was not, however, without its He

parallel the news-reader was kept fully in countenance. was most likely an Old Bailey official: trials for murder were no novelties to him; he had, perhaps, seen and conversed with scores of murderers in his time; and familiarity with them had bred indifference. Even a trial in which the very essence of human interest was concentrated, was to him rather a bore than otherwise; and it would be ridiculous to expect from him a show of much sensibility to what was going on. But on looking round, at the mere spectators who had come-as amateurs visit a theatre -evidently for amusement, I could not make similar excuses. Next to me sat a young man who, fearing the interest of the trial should flag during the day, had brought a book to entertain himself. I had the curiosity to peep at its title, and found it to be a volume of Balzac's "Scènes de la Vie privée." We shudder, when we read in histories of the French Reign of Terror, that the gossips of Paris were in the habit of taking their knitting to the foot of the guillotine, and plying their needles between each decapitation. I did not shudder in the present instance, it is true, because I could see it was not demoralisation but thoughtlessness which had prompted my neighbour to bring a not very moral French story-book for perusal in the Old Bailey. Other people around us had been, however, more thoughtful. They had pre