It was amply furnished, this
squire's pew, with arm-chairs and comfortable seats and stools and
books. Such a pew all furnished and adorned did a worthy clerk point out
to the witty Bishop of Oxford, Bishop Wilberforce, with much pride and
satisfaction. "If there be ought your lordship can mention to mak' it
better, I'm sure Squire will no mind gettin' on it."
The bishop, with a merry twinkle in his eye, turned round to the vicar,
who was standing near, and maliciously whispered:
"A card table!"
Such comfortable squires' pews still exist in some churches, but
"restoration" has paid scanty regard to old-fashioned notions and ideas,
and the squire and his family usually sit nowadays on benches similar to
those used by the rest of the congregation.
Then the choir sat in the west gallery and made strange noises and sang
curious tunes, the echoes of which we shall try to catch. No organ then
pealed forth its reverent tones and awaked the church with dulcet
harmonies: a pitch-pipe often the sole instrument. And then--what
terrible hymns were sung! Well did Campbell say of Sternhold and
Hopkins, the co-translators of the Psalms of David into English metre,
"mistaking vulgarity for simplicity, they turned into bathos what they
found sublime." And Tate and Brady's version, the "Dry Psalter" of
"Samuel Oxon's" witticism, was little better.
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