or from realising their exalted status to be miles above the person who was supposing himself able to interest them.  Anything but desirable persons were they who, after going round the church, returned with other friends, and then posed as men whose knowledge of the building was equal, if not a shade superior, to that of the guide.  Some parties would waste the time, and try one’s patience by having amongst them laggards, to whom explanations already given had to be repeated.  But we must pass by others, and proceed.  The mind would sometimes find diversion by observing the idiosyncrasies, and detecting the pretensions of individuals.  Gradually gaining acquaintance as we proceeded, we occasionally discovered some were aping gentility:  some assuming positions that knew them not, and some claiming talents they did not possess.  We will unmask a specimen of the latter class.  A man, who was unaccompanied by friends, wished to see the church he had heard so much of.  He seemed about thirty years of age; was a made-up exquisite, looking very imposing, peering as he did through gold-rimmed spectacles.  His talents were of such an order he could not think of hiding them.  He had learned Hebrew, not from printed books, as ordinary scholars are wont to do, but from MSS., and found it so easy a matter, it “only took two hours,” and it was simply “out of curiosity” that he undertook it.  Before mentally placing this paragon among the classics, we showed him our MS. Roll (exquisitely written, as many visitors are aware, in unpointed Hebrew), and asked him to read a few words.  This was indeed pricking the bubble.  Tell it not in Gath, but publish we will, the discovery we instantly made.  Our Hebrew scholar had forgotten that Hebrew ran from right to left! and worse still, he even shook his intellectual head, and gravely confessed that he “wasn’t quite sure but that the Roll was written in Greek.”

Other sources of relief to the mind jaded with constant repetition arose from the peculiar remarks that were made, and the strange questions that were often asked.

The organ has been a source of wonderment to multitudes who had never seen or heard of a divided organ.  Wonderful stories had reached the ears of some respecting it.

“Is this the organ that was wrecked?” “Is this the organ that was dug out of the sea?” “Is this the organ that was taken out of the Spanish galleon?” “Wasn’t this organ smuggled out of some ship?” “Didn’t it belong to Handel?” “Wasn’t this organ made for St. Peter’s at Rome?” With confidence says one, “This organ really belongs to the continent; it was confiscated in some war.”  Whilst another as confidently asserts that “it was built in Holland for one of the English cathedrals, and the vessel that conveyed it was caught in a storm and wrecked upon Yarmouth beach; it was then taken possession of by the inhabitants and erected in this church.”  Others, wishing to show their intimate knowledge of this instrument, have told their friends that the trumpet, which is a solid piece of wood, held by the angel at the summit of the northern organ-case, is only blown at the death of a royal person.  And a lady, instead of informing her friend that it was a vox humana stop, called it a vox populi.