The church was of old Norman architecture; low and massive outside:  inside, of vast space, only a quarter of which was filled on ordinary Sundays.  The walls were disfigured by numerous tablets of black and white marble intermixed, and the usual ornamentation of that style of memorial as erected in the last century, of weeping willows, urns, and drooping figures, with here and there a ship in full sail, or an anchor, where the seafaring idea prevalent through the place had launched out into a little originality.  There was no wood-work, the church had been stripped of that, most probably when the neighbouring monastery had been destroyed.  There were large square pews, lined with green baize, with the names of the families of the most flourishing ship-owners painted white on the doors; there were pews, not so large, and not lined at all, for the farmers and shopkeepers of the parish; and numerous heavy oaken benches which, by the united efforts of several men, might be brought within earshot of the pulpit.  These were being removed into the most convenient situations when Molly and Sylvia entered the church, and after two or three whispered sentences they took their seats on one of these.

The vicar of Monkshaven was a kindly, peaceable old man, hating strife and troubled waters above everything.  He was a vehement Tory in theory, as became his cloth in those days.  He had two bugbears to fear—­the French and the Dissenters.  It was difficult to say of which he had the worst opinion and the most intense dread.  Perhaps he hated the Dissenters most, because they came nearer in contact with him than the French; besides, the French had the excuse of being Papists, while the Dissenters might have belonged to the Church of England if they had not been utterly depraved.  Yet in practice Dr Wilson did not object to dine with Mr. Fishburn, who was a personal friend and follower of Wesley, but then, as the doctor would say, ’Wesley was an Oxford man, and that makes him a gentleman; and he was an ordained minister of the Church of England, so that grace can never depart from him.’  But I do not know what excuse he would have alleged for sending broth and vegetables to old Ralph Thompson, a rabid Independent, who had been given to abusing the Church and the vicar, from a Dissenting pulpit, as long as ever he could mount the stairs.  However, that inconsistency between Dr Wilson’s theories and practice was not generally known in Monkshaven, so we have nothing to do with it.

Dr Wilson had had a very difficult part to play, and a still more difficult sermon to write, during this last week.  The Darley who had been killed was the son of the vicar’s gardener, and Dr Wilson’s sympathies as a man had been all on the bereaved father’s side.  But then he had received, as the oldest magistrate in the neighbourhood, a letter from the captain of the Aurora, explanatory and exculpatory.  Darley had been resisting the orders of an officer in his Majesty’s service.  What would become of due subordination and loyalty, and the interests of the service, and the chances of beating those confounded French, if such conduct as Darley’s was to be encouraged? (Poor Darley! he was past all evil effects of human encouragement now!)