and it seemed to us a good opportunity to depart on our way.
The fire of Puritanism, or whatever other name that erst powerful "ism" goes under now, is not extinguished in the land but smoulders; will it ever break out into a destroying flame again? It may; history sometimes repeats itself! The swing of the pendulum just now appears in favour of ritualism, strongly so, it seems to me; who can tell that it may not swing back again? I once asked a New England Puritan of the pure old Cromwellian stock—a refined man, a lover of art and literature—how it was that Puritanism, in days past at any rate, was such a deadly enemy to art? He replied, "It was so, simply of painful necessity. Freedom, religious freedom, is more than art. Priestly tyranny had enslaved art, bribed it into its service, and art had to pay the penalty. Nowadays art has shaken herself free, practically free from her ancient masters, and Puritanism and art are friends. And the Puritan lion may lie down with the art lamb and not hurt him." Which is a comforting thought should the pendulum suddenly swing back again. It seems just now highly improbable, but the improbable occasionally comes to pass. How highly improbable, nay impossible, it would have seemed, say a century or so ago, that incense, vestments, lighted candles on the "altar," would find place in the Church of England service, to say nothing of holy water being used, and "the Angelus bell being rung at the consecration of the elements, and the elevation of the Host," as I read in the
