sign of the George and Dragon, gorgeous in color and daring in design, will look better when the rains of half a score of winters shall have dimmed its inordinate splendor and made it indecipherable. On the steps of yonder grocer's shop John Wesley once preached: there are still some in the town who adhere to his opinions and methods. The church on the hill-top on the northern edge of the town is the headquarters of the "Free Church," a very Zion, if not a Gibraltar, for those views of religion called pure and reformed; but neither for it nor for the Hall farther along the river, can we longer neglect the dinner which awaits us at the Green Man. Now has disappeared every sign of rain. The evening is coming on in fullest grace, and from the higher parts of Ashbourne we look upon a landscape we fear not to think one of the loveliest in all the world. Listen! There are singers. To-day came to Ashbourne a choir of men and boys from Stafford, and now their outing done and the time for their home-going having been reached, they stay their break in front of the Green Man and sing a hymn. How rich and sweet their voices in the still eventide! And the people gather around them, with heads uncovered, and listen to the praise offered unto Him whose throne is beyond the blue sky and the red golden sunset. A tidy, old-fashioned room this, in which our dinner is served. If it lack elegance, it certainly possesses comfort. The low windows, with the curtains along the bottom, bespeak that ease and refreshment which the traveller may here have. The table, too, is well furnished-a shoulder of mutton, cold ham, meat pie, vegetables; a snow-white cloth and crockeryware of the blue willow pattern. Ashbourne has been famous for its cheese; but it is not evident that the piece offered us is of native growth or manufacture. Mr. Charles Cotton held that the town had the best malt and the worst ale in England: times have changed, as we can testify, so far as the latter part of his statement is concerned. Perhaps it may be that mine host of the Talbot gave to Viator and Piscator, instead of "a flagon of his best ale," a bumbard of broken beer, as the ancients called the leavings of what has been drawn for others. Certainly, that which is set before us, brown and foaming-a very crowned cup, to use the old expression-would pass the most rigorous ale-conner. We set to: for Kit's as hungry now As a besieged city, and as dry As a Dutch commentator. Curiously enough our day is to end with the merry noise of minstrelsy and song. Before we get to dessert some Salvation Army people take their station in front of our windows, and lift up their voices in strains which it would be hard to denominate either as sacred or as profane. A pale young man holds the flag; another beats the drum-which instrument, by the way, some imagine to be typical of the whole movement: noisy and empty; a girl plays a tambourine as skilfully as though she had served an apprenticeship on a gaiety stage; and a woman, old enough to be the mother of the company, does the singing. Her voice is good. Around them gather a few children, but older passers-by scarcely look at them. On the face of our waitress I observe a shadow of contempt, and to a question I propose she replies, with not a little irritation: "They do no good at all. They disturb sick folks with their drum, and try to make people stay away from church, and go to their meetings. Some more pudding, sir?" "But," I asked, not heeding her request, "have they not helped some who went to no place of worship?" "Everybody in Ashbourne goes to church or chapel," retorted the maid; we are not heathen. Some more pudding, sir?" "Still, they are earnest and sincere, you know, and it is not right to have ill will against anyone who is trying to help others." But my waitress was not to be daunted or softened: "They are not half as earnest and sincere as is Satan. He tries day and night to get hold of us, and he means to have us if he can. And as to helping others, if taking people away from church and telling them that the way to heaven is through the Salvation Army is any help, we can manage without it. Some more pudding, sir?" "I beg your pardon." And thoughtfully and slowly I eat my pudding, while outside the drum and the tambourine continue their doleful and outlandish noise. The clatter is not pleasant. I found out afterwards that the players thereof had shown themselves very offensive in their persistency, and much harm had been done by the reaction which had followed their early successes. Man has a fancy for doing that which is forbidden him. Had no command been given concerning the tree of knowledge, Eve would have had no desire to eat of its fruit, and perhaps were no one annoyed by the noisy ebullitions of the Salvation Army, and sought not for injunctions against them, the confusion would come to an end. In like manner, in every generation since men have determinedly broken the unity of the Church, the delight of differing from other people, and of showing defiance of principles which more conservative minds hold sacred, have made dissenters or nonconformists all the more anxious to go to the conventicle rather than to the parish church. God forbid that I should say one word against whatever may be of Christ amongst those who thus separate themselves from the body of the faithful: I speak only of such characteristics as have prevailed and do prevail among such people, and which impress me as being the chief cause for the existence of their societies. For I do not know that it is necessary to go out of the Church to be made like Christ or to live a virtuous life; and when anyone else thinks so, my charity comes to an end so far as that one is concerned. The Dissenter has thought so. He has enjoyed to the full the delicious sweetness of differing from the general run of people, and, under possibility of persecution, slipping up an alley to a meeting-house. He has also had a delight sweeter far than that, namely, the complacency with which the few who find themselves in such out-of-the-way corners regard themselves as the elect of the Lord, and the only righteous ones on earth. I do not know anything of the state of religion in Ashbourne, but I have recollections of the way this spirit has displayed itself in other places-in one, for instance, which I shall not closer indicate than to say that it is far from the reach and the sound of the drum in the street. In that place is a conventicle, which, like the drum, has for its result, if not its purpose, the disturbance of other people. No; if the ungodly were disturbed, I should be ready to wish it God-speed, but the ungodly are untouchedunless by the ungodly you mean the people who, like our waiting-maid in the "Green Man," serve God as their fathers have served Him for many long centuries. And that is exactly, let me tell you, what the typical sectarian considers the ungodly to be. In that conventicle, how the folks' mouths would water when the shoemaker,-who occupied the pulpit and loved to speak of the saints riding roughshod over the foes of righteousness, discoursed of the abomination of desolation set up in the parish church, and of the catastrophe that would some day befall all those who bowed down to the golden image of priestcraft, superstition, Puseyism and caste, which the Book of Common Prayer upheld, and concerning which essays were read by the parson,—an ungodly man, and doubtless a son of perdition! The whole town some day would be swept away, even as the world was covered by a flood, and as Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by fire and brimstone; but out of the destruction would be saved another Noah and another Lot, with their families-even that remnant which |