The ministers of the United Methodist Free Church body move about somewhat after the fashion of the Wesleyan preachers.  They first go to a place for twelve months, and if they stay longer it has to be through “invitation” from one of the quarterly meetings.  As a rule, they stop three or four years at one church, and then move off to some new circuit, where old sermons come in, at times, conveniently for new hearers.  The various churches are ruled by “leaders”—­men of a deaconly frame of mind, invested with power sufficient to enable them to rule the roost in ministerial matters, to say who shall preach and who shall not, and to work sundry other wonders in the high atmosphere of church government.  The “members” support their churches, financially, in accordance with their means.  There is no fixed payment.  Those who are better off, and not stingy, give liberally; the less opulent contribute moderately; those who can’t give anything don’t.  After an existence of about 30 years, the old chapel in the Orchard was pulled down, in order to make way for a larger and a better looking building.  During the work of reconstruction Sunday services were held in the school at the rear, which was built some time before, at a cost of 1,700 pounds.  The new chapel, which cost 2,600 pounds, was opened on the 22nd of May, 1862.  It has a rather ornamental front—­looks piquant and seriously nobby.  There is nothing of the “great” or the “grand” in any part of it.  The building is diminutive, cheerful, well-made, and inclined, in its stone work, to be fantastical.

Internally, it is clean, ornate, and substantial.  Its gallery has stronger supports than can be found in any other Preston chapel.  If every person sitting in it weighed just a ton it would remain firm.  There are two front entrances to the building, and at each end red curtains are fixed.  On pushing one pair aside, the other Sunday, we cogitated considerably as to what we should see inside.  We always associate mystery with curtains, “caudle lectures” with curtains, shows, and wax-work, and big women, and dwarfs with curtains; but as we slowly, yet determinedly, undid these United Methodist Free Church curtains, and presented our “mould of form” before the full and absolute interior, we beheld nothing special:  there were only a child, two devotional women, and a young man playing a slow and death-like tune on a well-made harmonium, present.  But the “plot thickened,” the place was soon moderately filled, and whilst in our seat, before the service commenced, we calmly pondered over many matters, including the difficulty we had in reaching the building.  Yes, and it was a difficulty.  We took the most direct cut, as we thought, to the place, from the southern side—­passed along the Market-place, into that narrowly-beautiful thoroughfare called New-street, then through a yet newer road made by the pulling down of old buildings in Lord-street, and reminding one by its sides of the ruins of Petra, and afterwards