When we turned into the chapel the second time—­this was during a forenoon service—­there were located in it an elderly, fatherly, farmerly man, who occupied the pulpit; eleven middle-aged men, with subdued countenances; six young men with their eyes and ears open to every move; nine blushing maidens with their back hair combed up stiffly and their mastoid processes bared all round; nine matured members of the fair sex with larger bonnets and more antique hair arrangements; five little girls; four small boys; and seven singers; making in the aggregate fifty-two.  The person in the pulpit was, we learned, a Fylde farmer; but he must at some time have lived in the north, for he said “dowter” for daughter, “gert” for great, “nather” for neither, “natteral” for natural, and gave his “r’s” capital good exercise, turning them round well, throughout his entire discourse; and he cared very little for either singular or plural verbs.  If he got the sense out he deemed it sufficient.  He spoke in a conversational style, was more descriptive than argumentative, was homely, discreet, and neither too lachrymose nor too buoyant.  This preacher, we have been told, was Mr. James Fearclough, of Hardhorn, near Blackpool, who was the original organiser of the church.

The singers, who collected themselves around a square, conical-headed table, in a shy-looking corner, gave vent to their feelings without music books.  They had hymns before them, and these they held to be sufficient.  Their performances were rather of a timid character; but this might be to some extent accounted for by the fact that the conductor was absent.  When they started a tune they sighed, blushed, held their heads down, and looked up shyly into their eye lids; but when they had proceeded a little and got the congregation into a sympathetic humour, courage came to them, and they moved on more exactly and courageously.  About a dozen preachers have been tried since the pulpit was vacated by the Darwen gentleman; but the exact man has not yet been found, and until his advent the congregation will have to solicit “supplies,” and be content with what they can get.  None of the members can preach; nobody in the congregation can preach; and their only hope at present consists in the foreign import trade.  The congregation has a homely, unpretentious, kindly-hearted, social appearance, and when in the midst of it you feel as if you were at home, and as if the tea things had only to be brought out to make matters complete.  There are no loud talkers, no scandal-mongers, no sanguine souls who get into a state of incandescence during prayers or sermons here.  A respectable, homely, smoothly-elegant serenity dominates in it.