Let me, with some diffidence, approach the subject of the Church in the country town. I never truly understood the Church of fifty years ago until, in the autumn of 1885, I perambulated with one who is jealous for Church architecture and Church antiquities the north-east corner of Norfolk, where there are many churches, and most of them are fine. In our pilgrimage among these monuments we presently came upon one at the aspect of which we were fain to sit down and weep. It was, externally, an old and venerable structure, which might have been made beautiful within. Plaster covered the walls, and hid the columns; the interior of the church was crowded with high pews, painted white, and having along the top a sham mahogany kind of hand-rail; the chancel was encumbered with these enclosures, which hid the old brass-work; that which belonged to the Squire was provided with red curtains on brass rods to keep the common people from gazing at the Quality. The reading-desk, pulpit, and altar were covered with a cloth which had been red, but had long before faded away into an indescribably shabby brown. The pulpit was not part of the old three-decker, but was stuck into the wall; the windows had lost their old tracery; the painted glass was gone; the roof was a flat whitewashed ceiling. The church, to eyes accustomed to better things, presented a deplorable appearance. My friend, pointing solemnly to the general shabbiness, remarked, ‘_Donec templa refeceris_.’ It was the motto of the journal started early in the Forties by a small knot of Cambridge men--among whom was Mr. Beresford Hope, now, alas! no more--who desired to raise and beautify public worship in the Anglican faith, and also, I believe, to assert and insist upon certain points of doctrine. And they clearly perceived that, while the churches remained in their neglected condition, and church architecture was at its then low ebb, their doctrine was impossible. How far they have succeeded not only the Ritualists themselves proclaim, but also every other party in the Church, and even the Nonconformists, who have shared in the increased beauty and fitness of public worship. [Illustration: THE QUEEN RECEIVING THE SACRAMENT AFTER HER CORONATION--WESTMINSTER ABBEY, JUNE 29, 1838. (From the Picture by C. R. Leslie, R.A., at Windsor Castle.)] He who can remember the ordinary Church Services in the early Fifties very well knows what they were in the Thirties, except that in the latter there were still some venerable divines who wore a wig.