clay-bound roads of the Weald; for although it left the Wells early in the morning, it did not reach Lewes, its halting-place, until five o'clock in the afternoon.
In silence the body was committed to the vault, which, indeed, was well, seeing there was none who could have spoken truly concerning him.
An inscription was placed on his tomb, which may be read to this day, an inscription dictated by himself a few days before his death, and which plainly shows that he passed away without being delivered from that spirit of Self which was the besetting sin of his life, and the ultimate cause of the failure of his work. For all that was of self, all that was specially identified with his name as the founder of a sect, soon withered away. There was the usual manifestation of hero-worship after his death,—a fight for relics, a setting-up of memorials. His coffee-pot fetched £16, his chair sixty guineas!
But the big chapel began to look very dismal after its light was extinguished. War soon broke out between Lady Sanderson, the trustees, and the dwindling congregation. The place was thrown into Chancery, and after a wretched existence of about twenty years it was sold by order of the Court, and became an Episcopal Chapel, and is now a district church called St Bartholomew's.
A few years since the remains of the pulpit from which he had preached to thousands, and the handsome mural tablet which for twenty years cried "Ichabod" to the few dejected worshippers who found their way into the deserted pews, were discovered hidden in the dust of a builder's yard—the pulpit too rotten for anything but firewood, the tablet alone being of value was cut up into slips for cheap mantelpieces!
As to what remained of his property, it was nearly all lost in Chancery suits. His eldest son did not get his legacy until twenty years after his father's death.
As it was with his own chapel, so was it with nearly every place he had established throughout the country. As soon as the ministers died who had been placed in them as pastors, they rapidly declined.
In Sussex chiefly, and a few other localities, has he any considerable following left. There, amongst his own people, the
