1851 i99 rather than of convictions. As I walked home with my mother, my breast heaving, and my pulses throbbing, I said passionately : " I wonder what, hereafter, will be done with these pastors, Nougaret, Buscarlet, Merle d'Aubigne, Bernays and the rest of them ? I allow that here, they may be, and indubitably are, of utility, but hereafter no one will want to have them hooting and braying in the heavenly city." I presume that, as being of no further utility, as having accomplished their proper work, they will be laid aside in the housemaid's closet like the brooms and dusters. Worship ! Why, the performances in such places are not worship at all. As well consider a man to be in Court costume, who has reduced his clothing to a loin-cloth. And that is what Calvin, John Knox and Zwingli did with the services of the sanctuary. They brought it down to all but indecent nakedness. / My prejudices were not based on any theological grounds. I had my antipathies, but I had no great affection at the time for the Church of England, as all that I knew of it was by the dreary performances in the chapel in Queen's Square, London, and Lew parish church, and the unattractive exhibitions in the Continental chapels—usually hotel salles-a-manger. At the same time I obtained glimpses of brighter things from the Church history story-books I had read. But they taught one to look back to past days for the ideal of the Church and of worship. We never called on M. Nougaret, nor invited him up to dinner ; nor, for the matter of that, did we open our doors and spread the table for any of the Canons of the Cathedral or for the cure of the nearest parish church. But we had several French friends, especially the archeviste, the Comte de Geneste, and others we came to know through the Labatte family. When I had a half-holiday, I always ran off to the cathedral with my sketch-book and pencil, and spent long hours in the exquisite cloisters drawing the sculptured foliage there, mainly of strawberry leaves, and those of the crane's-bill. How the mediaeval artists did love the flowers of the field and their leafage. To my mind the proportions of the cathedral interior are the most perfect I know, excepting only Exeter,1 and the cloisters are unsurpassed. At the time that we were there, the west doorway 1 The vaulting of Exeter Cathedral is unrivalled.
