violin, and ’cello.  The clerk gave out the “Twentieth Psalm of David,” and the fiddlers tuned for a moment and then played at once.  Then they struck up, and the clerk, absolutely alone, in a majestic voice which swayed up and down without regard to time or tune, sang it through like the braying of an ass; not a soul else joined in; the farmers amused and smiling at each other.  Such scenes were quite usual.

In Cornwall affairs were worse.  In one church the curate-in-charge had to be chained to the altar rails while he read the service, as he had a harmless mania, which made him suddenly flee from the church if his own activities were for an instant suspended, as, for example, by a response.  The churchwarden, a farmer, kept the padlock-key in his pocket till the service was safely over, and then released the imprisoned cleric.  At another Cornish church the vicar’s sister used to read the lessons in a deep bass voice.

Congregations were often very sparse.  Few people attended, and perhaps none on weekdays, unless the clerk was in his place.  On such occasions the parson was tempted to emulate the humour of Dean Swift, who at the first weekday service that he held after his appointment to the living of Laracor, in the diocese of Meath, after waiting for some time in vain for a congregation, began the service, addressing his clerk, “Dearly beloved Roger, the scripture moveth you and me in sundry places,” etc.

When the Psalms were read, you heard the first verse read in a mellifluous and cultured voice.  Perhaps it was the evening of the twenty-eighth day of the month, and you listened to the sacred words of Psalm cxxxvii., “By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept, when we remembered thee, O Sion.”  Then followed a bellow from a raucous throat:  “Has fur ur ’arp, we ’anged ’em hup hupon the trees that hare thurin.”  And then at the end of the Lord’s Prayer, after every one had finished, the same voice came drowsily cantering in:  “For hever and hever, Haymen.”  Sometimes we heard, “Let us sing to the praise and glory of God the ’undred and sixtieth Psalm—­’Ymn ’ooever." The numbers of the hymns or Psalms were scored on the two sides of a slate.  Sometimes the functionary in the gallery forgot to turn the slate after the first hymn.  “Let us sing,” began the clerk—­(pause)—­“Turn the slate, will you, if you please, Master Scroomes?” he continued, addressing the neglectful person.

The singing was no mechanical affair of official routine—­it was a drama.  “As the moment of psalmody approached a slate appeared in front of the gallery, advertising in bold characters the Psalm about to be sung.  The clerk gave out the Psalm, and then migrated to the gallery, where in company with a bassoon and two key-bugles, a carpenter understood to have an amazing power of singing ‘counter,’ and two lesser musical stars, formed the choir.  Hymns were not known.  The New Version was regarded with melancholy tolerance.  ‘Sternhold and