The great three-decked pulpit of the Georgian age is still familiar to our memories.  To the next generation it will be at length a curiosity of the past.  Nor must the mighty sounding-board be forgotten, impending with almost threatening bulk over the preacher’s head, and adorned with the emblematic symbol of grace:—­

    I cast my eyes upon him, and explored
    The dove-like form upon the sounding hoard.[901]

The pulpit had supplanted the old portable box-desk at the time of the Reformation, and had maintained itself in undiminished honour through all the subsequent changes.  In rich London parishes much rare workmanship was often expended upon it.  If not by its costliness, at all events by its dimensions, it was apt to throw all other church furniture into the shade.  And ’in a few abnormal instances, particularly in watering-places, the rostra would even overhang the altar, or occupy a sort of gallery behind it.’[902] During the earlier part of the century, an hour-glass, in a wood or iron frame, was still the not unfrequent appendage to a pulpit.[903] In the Elizabethan period it had been general.  But perhaps the Puritan preachers had not cared to be reminded that preaching had its limits; or a later generation, on the other hand, might dread the suggestion that the sermon might last the hour.  At all events, as they wore out, they were not often replaced; and Bishop Kennet[904], writing in the third decade of the century, spoke of them as already beginning to be uncommon.  They were chiefly to be seen in old-fashioned country churches, such as that where, in Gay’s eclogue, the village swains followed fair Blouzelind to her burial, and listened while the good man warned them from his text, and descanted upon the uncertainty of life—­

    And spoke the hour-glass in her praise quite out.[905]

The bible ‘of larger volume,’ as directed in Lord Cromwell’s injunctions, and in the Canons of 1751[906], venerable with age, might sometimes be seen still chained to its desk[907], as in the old days.  In Pope’s time, church bibles were very commonly in black-letter type[908].

Litany desks were a great rarity.  One in Exeter Cathedral appears to have been disused about 1740[909].

Everyone knows what a neglected aspect the font usually bore during the whole of the Georgian period; how it was often thrust into some corner of the church, as if it were a kind of encumbrance that could not be absolutely done away with, and very frequently supplanted by some basin or pewter vessel placed inside it.  In 1799 Carter recorded with indignation that in Westminster Abbey the font had been altogether removed, to make space for some new monument, and was lying topsy-turvy in a side room[910].  In this, however, as in other respects, the neglect that was too generally prevalent must of course not be spoken of as if it were by any means universal.