o account. When he got to Melford he found a Mr. Campbell had been
asked to meet him; a young Cambridge rector of a neighbouring parish, of
the same religious sentiments on the whole as Bateman, and, though a
little positive, a man of clear head and vigorous mind.

They had been going over the church; and the conversation at dinner
turned on the revival of Gothic architecture--an event which gave
unmixed satisfaction to all parties. The subject would have died out,
almost as soon as it was started, for want of a difference upon it, had
not Bateman happily gone on boldly to declare that, if he had his will,
there should be no architecture in the English churches but Gothic, and
no music but Gregorian. This was a good thesis, distinctly put, and gave
scope for a very pretty quarrel. Reding said that all these adjuncts of
worship, whether music or architecture, were national; they were the
mode in which religious feeling showed itself in particular times and
places. He did not mean to say that the outward expression of religion
in a country might not be guided, but it could not be forced; that it
was as preposterous to make people worship in one's own way, as be merry
in one's own way. "The Greeks," he said, "cut the hair in grief, the
Romans let it grow; the Orientals veiled their heads in worship, the
Greeks uncovered them; Christians take off their hats in a church,
Mahometans their shoes; a long veil is a sign of modesty in Europe, of
immodesty in Asia. You may as well try to change the size of people, as
their forms of worship. Bateman, we must cut you down a foot, and then
you shall begin your ecclesiastical reforms."

"But surely, my worthy friend," answered Bateman, "you don't mean to say
that there is no natural connexion between internal feeling and outward
expression, so that one form is no better than another?"

"Far from it," answered Charles; "but let those who confine their music
to Gregorians put up crucifixes in the highways. Each is the
representative of a particular place or time."

"That's what I say of our good friend's short coat and long cassock,"
said Campbell; "it is a confusion of different times, ancient and
modern."

"Or of different ideas," said Charles, "the cassock Catholic, the coat
Protestant."

"The reverse," said Bateman; "the cassock is old Hooker's Anglican
habit: the coat comes from Catholic France."

"Anyhow, it is what Mr. Reding calls a mixture of ideas," said Campbell;
"and