I
wonder how the next generation will deal with our alabaster reredos
and our stained windows, with which we are all as well pleased as we
were fifty years ago with the plain red cross with a target-like
arrangement above and below it in the east window, or as poor
Margaret may have been with her livery altar-cloth. Indeed, it
seems to me that we got more delight out of our very imperfect work,
designed by ourselves and sent to Clarence to be executed by men in
back streets in London, costing an immensity of trouble, than can be
had now by simply choosing out of a book of figures of cut and dried
articles.
What an enthusiastic description Clarence sent of the illuminated
commandments in the new Church of St. Katharine in the Regent's
Park! How Emily and I gloated over the imitation of them when we
replaced the hideous old tables, and how exquisite we thought the
initial I, which irreverent youngsters have likened, with some
justice, to an enormous overfed caterpillar, enwreathed with red and
green cabbage leaves!
My mother was startled at these innovations; but my father, who had
kept abreast with the thought of the day, owned to the doctrines as
chiming in with his unbroken belief, and transferred to the
improvements in the church the interest which he had lost in the
estate. The farmers had given up their distrust of him, and
accepted him loyally as friend and landlord, submitting to the
reseating of the church, and only growling moderately at decorations
that cost them nothing.
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