The Cathedral Church at Liverpool.

Auckland Star, Volume XXI, Issue 276, 22 November 1890, Page 4 (Supplement)

The Cathedral Church at Liverpool.

It wae a lafco autumn afternoon when I first saw the interior of tins ugly old temple—a grey, murky day, and all the air of the sanctuary permeated, not with incenee, but with the characteristic Liverpool odour of soft coal. A few gaslights dimly twinkled in a halo of brownish haze, near the altar. There seemed to be no colour anywhere. All the woodwork—the front 3 of" the galleries, the stalls, the greab carved altar - piece — was black, its polished darkness broken only by thin white streaks, the reflection of the garish light outside through the great plainly glazed arched windows in tho galleries. Over the altar was a great window in an ancemic mezzotint, representing Sfc. Peter with his keys, and eurrounded with a border of red and blue panes of glass. A modest throne for the bishop rose conspicuous among the stalls of the choir. The Organ, in a gallery on the left of the altar, coon begins to play, and the choir rapidly filed into the church from a small circular sacristy in the tower. The service was the usual evensong of the English cathedral, not ill performed ; and with an anthem full of rille, trills, and quavers, and pleasant parts and harmonics —not solemn nor devout, but quaint, and juafc matching the queer old pseudo-classic church whose walls were bathed in its soft melody. It was all so intensely 18th century, so ugly, so homelike, so interesting, that I could bub think of Dr. Johnson at St. Bride's, Fleetstreet, or else believe him on a visit to this same church, where ho would have been placed in a pew devoted to the Corporation of Liverpool—a pew decorated with two elaborate wroughb-iron posts, heavily gilt, upon which stood tho cMc bird, an ostrich. This same proud fowl figurcson a waterspout without, and beneath him, on tho said spoub, appears tine date of tho church, which is, I believe, 1611. Hardly an afternoon passed that I did not find mysolf at St. Peter's, in the midst of a congregation made up of working men, pale clerks, old women and doddering old men, young girls and little children ; always a good congregation for a weok-day service ; always the same indefinable English steadiness and sturdiness aboutbhe performance of it, and in tho behaviour of the people, which is so satisfying after the selfconscious reverence or (what is worse) the unconscious irreverence which are the Scylla and Charybdis of American Religious Life. It was one evening, after a particularly well-sung service, thafo, as 1 emerged into the dark street, a little bent man, in a tall hat, a poor faded oddity from heaven knows where, touched mo on tha arm and said, 'Parding, sir, but thab hanthein—wasn't it beautiful, sir? Oh, sir, I do henjoy them hanthems, eir—no offence, I hope, sir. Good-night. , And he ranishod into tho darkness. 'I think,' eaid Ito my friend, ' That man must have escaped, from— Dickens.' Indeed, it was enough to remind anyone of ' Hard Times' or Mrs Gaskell's 'Mary Barton ' to see, on certain mornings, the couples waiting in the church to be married. Somehow ib seemed impossible that they could be about to take part in a ceremony which the traditions of all lands and all ages surround with ioy (or an expensive imitation of it) in so sadcoloured and commonplace a manner. No music, no well-dreesed crowds, no flowers. It made me long to buy each couple at; least a wedding favour; and possibly that good angel of European fiction, the rich American, will some day found a ' dole' to supply rice and iced cakes to the lads and lasses who frequent St. Peter's on marriagedays. Old shoos the couples seem to bring with them.— 'Atlantic Monthly.'