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��SEVERAL SUNDAYS IN EUROPE.
��SEVERAL SUNDAYS IN EUROPE.
��BY ASA MC FARLAND.
��The author of this article spent a por- tion of the summer and autumn of the year 1850 in England, Scotland and upon the continent, during which, however in- dustrious he may have been on the secu- lar days of the week, in visiting objects of interest, Sunday was as uniformly em- braced to make observation of the people and their churches on the day set apart for the public worship of the Most High. We witnessed religious services in houses of every degree of cost, from the very ancient stone church on the Isle of Wight — an edifice gray with the moss of centuries — up to cathedrals which are the wonder of the ages, and herewith write of the Sundays thus spent.
A SUNDAY IN LANCASTER, ENGLAND.
The ancient and very quiet city of Lan- caster contains an establishment of the Church of England, known as St. Ma- ry's, and on the 4th of August I sat, a patient spectator, of the assembled con- gregation. Presently there was a stir near the door, as if something was about to happen. And it was so. The court was in session in that shire town of the County of Lancaster, and the excite- ment in the vestibule of St. Mary's was caused by a procession of novel charac- ter to an inhabitant of the United States. It consisted of judges and officers of the ' court, the mayor of Lancaster and his under officei'S, with the sheiiff of the county and the constables of Lancaster, all walking two and two — the sheriff and the beadle at the head of the column. The judges were in garments set off with ermine. The mayor wore an ample blue robe, buff under garments and three-cor- nered hat. The badge of the sheriff was a staff, or pole, of rake-handle length, with a gilded ball, which emblem of au- thority was elevated at his side and car- ried there until he had escorted the
��judges and the corporation of Lancaster to their proper positions in the church. Then he took his own place, depositing his staff in a socket in the pew, and this affair of state having been carried out in due order, the services commenced.
In St. Mary's church the distinctions so obvious in monarchical governments between the rich and tile poor was quite obvious; but while the wealthy classes were in pews elaborately furnished, am- ple provision was also made for those without the means to own or to hire sit- tings. There seemed to be three orders of people in St. Mary's : the nobility and gentry, the middle classes and the poor, some of the last named being charity children. It may thus be easily imag- ined that this assembly lacked the homo- genous appearance of congregations this side the water. The judges, the mayor and the corporation, the sheriff, the beadle and the police, several of these functionaries displaying much gold lace; the janitor of the edifice in a flowing black surplice, the well-to-do people in high-back pews, the shop-keepers and other middling interest people in a sec- ondary division of the house, and several laboring men in shirt sleeves, constituted an assembly of novel character. Just be- fore the services commenced, a crippled woman, seated in a hand-carriage, was drawn into one of the aisles, and remained in the vehicle to the close.
The church stood upon the margin of a very ancient cemetery, and a sun-dial was fixed upon a pillar, three to five feet high, near the entrance to the house. The church, the cemetery, the sun-dial, the arrangement of people in the house, it may be supposed made up a specta- cle of novel description to a person who attended public worship in a Concord church edifice the last Sunday before
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