During the short but active reign of the Puritans in England, they acted upon this preposterous opinion, and sold the Church organs, without being scrupulous concerning the uses to which they might be applied. A writer of that age, speaking of the prevalence of drunkenness, as a national vice, says, “that nothing may be wanting to the height of luxury and impiety of this abomination, they have translated the organs out of the Churches to set them up in taverns, chaunting their dithyrambics and bestial bacchanalias to the tune of those instruments which were wont to assist them in the celebration of God's praises, and regulate the voices of the worst singers in the world,—which are the English in their churches at present.” It cannot be supposed that the Organs which were thus disposed of, were instruments of any great cost or value. An old pair of Organs, (for that was the customary mode of expression, meaning a set,—and in like manner a pair of cards, for a pack;)—an old pair of this kind belonging to Lambeth Church was sold in 1565 for £1. 10_s._ Church Organs therefore, even if they had not been at a revolutionary price, would be within the purchase of an ordinary vintner. “In country parish Churches,” says Mr. Denne the Antiquary, “even where the district was small, there was often a choir of singers, for whom forms, desks and books were provided; and they probably most of them had benefactors who supplied them with a pair of organs that might more properly have been termed a box of whistles. To the best of my recollection there were in the chapels of some of the Colleges in Cambridge very, very, indifferent instruments. That of the chapel belonging to our old house was removed before I was admitted.” The use of the organ has occasioned a great commotion, if not a schism, among the methodists of late. Yet our holy Herbert could call Church music the “sweetest of sweets;” and describe himself when listening to it, as disengaged from the body, and “rising and falling with its wings.” Harris, the chief builder of the Doncaster Organ, was a contemporary and rival of Father Smith, famous among Organists. Each built one for the Temple Church, and Father Smith's had most votes in its favor. The peculiarity of the Doncaster Organ, which was Harris's masterpiece, is, its having, in the great organ, two trumpets and a clarion, throughout the whole compass; and these stops are so excellent, that a celebrated musician said every pipe in them was worth its weight in silver. Our Doctor dated from that year, in his own recollections, as the great era of his life. It served also for many of the Doncastrians, as a date to which they carried back their computations, till the generation which remembered the erecting of the organ was extinct.