In one of the up-town streets of New-York there is a Protestant Episcopal Church dedicated to St. Alban. It is externally a plain, unattractive little building of brick and stone, in the early English style, with a modest little porch, and a sharp high roof, surmounted by a belfry and a cross. Within there is little to be seen in the way of ornament about the body of the church. The seats are plain benches rather than pews, and are free to all comers. But any one who should enter St. Alban's, not knowing to what denomination it belonged, and should look toward the sanctuary, would be very apt to fancy for a moment that he had got into a Catholic Church. Let us imagine ourselves among the crowd of curious spectators who fill the edifice of a Sunday morning. In place of the reading-desk conspicuous in most Protestant meeting-houses, there is a very proper-looking altar set back against the chancel wall, and ornamented with a colored and embroidered antependium. Behind it, instead of a painting, there is an illuminated screen-work, with inscriptions in old English ecclesiastical text, not much easier to be read than if they were in Latin. Where the tabernacle ought to be, stands a large gilt cross; on each side of it are vases and ornaments. On a shelf which runs along the wall back of the altar there are candlesticks, three tall ones at each side, and two others just over the altar itself. We see altar-cards, such as are used at mass; a burse for holding the corporal; and a chalice covered with a veil, the color of which varies with the season of the ecclesiastical year. Today not being a festival, the hue is green. At one end of the altar is a big book on a movable stand. At the epistle side is a credence table with a silver paten, on which is the wafer-bread for communion, and with vessels of wine and water that might be called cruets if they were only a little smaller. The pulpit stands just outside the railings on the left. There is a little raised desk on it for the preachers's book or manuscript, and this desk is covered with a green veil. Opposite the pulpit on the right hand side is a lectern with a bible on it. The lectern likewise has green hangings. On one side of the sanctuary is a row of stalls, precisely like those we see in some of our cathedrals and seminary-chapels. On the other are benches for the choristers. The organ is in a recess just behind them, and the organist sits in the chancel, in full view of the people, with his back to the instrument. He wears a white surplice, and presents altogether a very respectable and ecclesiastical appearance. {53}