Upon a high piece of enclosed land, adjoining Fylde-road, stands St. Peter’s Church.  Portions of its precincts are covered with gravestones; the remainder has been “considerably damaged” of late, according to the belief of one of the churchwardens, by the vicious scratching of a number of irreverent hens, whose owners will be prosecuted if they do not look better after them.  The other Sunday, we saw a notice posted at the front of the church relative to the great hen-scratching question.  It is said that some of these tame and reclaimed birds have penetrated a foot or two into the ground for the purpose of lying, not laying, therein; and on this account it is important that their proprietors should look more (h)energetically after them.  The foundation stone of St. Peter’s Church was laid by Mr. Justice Park, one of the old recorders of Preston, in 1822; Rickman, an able Birmingham architect, designed the place; and the edifice (sans steeple, which was built in 1852, out of money left by the late Thomas German, Esq.), was erected at a cost of 6,900 pounds, provided by the Commissioners for the building of new churches.  St. Peter’s has a lofty, commanding appearance.  Learned people say it is built in the florid Gothic style of architecture, and we are not inclined to dispute their definition.  It has a very churchly look, and if the steeple were at the other end, it would be equally orthodox.  The world, as a rule, fixes its steeples westward; but St. Peter’s, following a few others we could name, rises in the opposite direction, and, like a good Mussulman, turns to the East.  There is nothing in its graveyard calling for special comment.  Neither monuments nor lofty tombs relieve it.  All round it has a flat dull aspect, and good arrangements have been made for walking over the tombstones and obliterating their inscriptions.  There are two ways into the church at the western end; both are near each other; but one has advantages which the other does not possess.  Passing through the larger you immediately face the pulpit and the congregation; entering by the other you can hang your harp on several preliminary willows—­sit just sideways and hear what’s going on, stay behind the screen until a point arrives when a move forward can be made without many people catching your “mould of form,” or inquire who’s present and who isn’t, and glide out if nothing suitable is observed.

St. Peter’s Church, internally, looks dirty.  If cleanliness be next to godliness, a good cleaning would do it good and improve its affinities.  Whitewash, paint, floorcloths, dusters, wash leathers, and sundry other articles in the curriculum of scrubbers, renovators, and purifiers are needed.  The walls want mundifying, so does the ceiling, so do the floors; the Ten Commandments need improving; the Apostles’ Creed isn’t plain enough; the spirit of a time worn grimness requires ostracising from the place.  All is substantial; but there is an ancient unwashed dulness about the general establishment, which needs