As one looks about this church the present fades away and the past comes back.  I see, once more, the Rector, what time George II. was King, in full wig and black gown poring over his learned discourse.  Below him sleeps his clerk.  In the Lord Mayor’s pew, robed in garments and chain of state, sleep my Lord Mayor and the worshipful the Sheriffs; their footmen, all in blue and green and gold, are in the aisle; the rich merchant of the parish clad in black velvet, with silk stockings, silver buckles to their shoes, ruffles of the richest and rarest lace at their throats, and neckties of the same hanging down before their long silk waistcoats, sleep in their pews—­it is a sleepy time for the Church Service—­beside their wives and children.  The wives are grand in hoop, and powder, and painted face.  We know what is meant by rank in the days of King George II.  In this our parish church we who are or have been wardens of our Company, aldermen who have passed the chair, or aldermen who have yet to pass it, know what is due to our position, and we bear ourselves accordingly.  Our inferiors—­the clerks and the shopkeepers, the servants and the ’prentices—­we treat, it is true, with kindliness, but with condescension and with authority.  On those rare occasions when a Peer comes to our civic banquets we show him that we know what is due to his rank.  As for our life, it is centred in this parish; here are our houses, here we live, here we carry on our business, and here we die.  Our poor are our servants when they are young and strong, and they are our bedesmen when they grow old.  Do not, I entreat you, believe in the fiction that the Church neglected the poor during the last century.  The poor in the City parishes were not neglected; the boys were thoroughly taught and conscientiously flogged, thieves were sent away to be hanged, bad characters were turned out, the old were maintained, the sick were looked after, the parish organization was complete, and the parish charities were many and generous.  Outside the City precincts, if you please, where there were few churches and great parishes, always increasing in population, the poor were neglected; but in the City, never.  But listen, the Rector has done.  He finishes his sermon with an admirable and appropriate quotation in Greek, which I hope the congregation understands; he pronounces the prayer of dismissal; the organ rolls, the clerk wakes up, the Lord Mayor and the Sheriffs walk forth and get into their coaches, the footmen climb up behind, the merchants and their families go out next, while all the people stand in respect to their masters and betters, and those set in authority over them.  Then come out the people themselves, and last of all the ’prentice boys come clattering down the aisle.

Let us awake.  It is Sunday morning again, but the merchants are gone.  The eighteenth century is gone, the church is empty, the parish is deserted; the streets are silent.

  Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep;
    The river glideth at his own sweet will! 
  Dear God! the very houses seem asleep,
    And all that mighty heart to lying still.