And this was not a mere assemblage of hearers. The congregation of St. Peter's were pre-eminently givers. £4000 a year was the regular product of the alms-bags, let alone the innumerable sums sent privately to the Vicar. "I want a thousand pounds." This simple but emphatic statement from the pulpit one Sunday was succeeded on the following Sunday by the quiet announcement, "I have got a thousand pounds." What was the secret of this attraction? It was entirely personal. It did not in the least depend on theological bias. Mr. Wilkinson belonged to no party. He had begun life as an Evangelical, and he retained the unction and fervour which were characteristic of that school at its best; but he was feeling his way towards a higher churchmanship, and had discarded most of his earlier shibboleths. The fabric was frankly hideous, and the well-meant attempts to make it look less like a barn and more like a church only resulted in something between a mosque and a synagogue. There was no ritualism. The music was too elaborate for the choir, and the curates were feeble beyond all description. The Vicar was everything; and even he had none of the gifts which are commonly supposed to make a Popular Preacher. He was not the least flummery or flowery. He was reserved and dignified in manner, and his language was quite unadorned. His voice was a monotonous moan, occasionally rising into a howl. He was conspicuously free from the tendency to prophesy smooth things, and he even seemed to take a delight in rubbing the pungent lotion of his spiritual satire into the sore places of the hearers' conscience. If Jeremiah had prophesied in a surplice, he would have been like the Prophet of Belgravia; and as for Savonarola, his sermon, as paraphrased in chapter xxiv. of "Romola," might have been delivered, with scarcely a word altered, from the pulpit of St. Peter's.