the new proprietary chapels erected to meet this
increase were often commercial speculations conducted on mere principles
of trade, most unworthy of a National Church. No reflecting Churchman
could fail to be disgusted with a traffic in pews which in many cases
absolutely excluded the poor.[891] Among the new churches there were in
fact only one or two honourable exceptions to the general rule. A free
church was opened at Bath, another at Birmingham;[892] it appears that
all the rest of these 'Chapels of Ease' unblushingly gave the lie, so
far as in them lay, to the declaration of our Lord that the poor have
the Gospel preached unto them. Some time had yet to elapse before
improved feeling could do much towards abating the unchristian nuisance.
But energetic protests were occasionally heard. 'I would reprobate,'
wrote Mrs. Barbauld (1790) 'those little gloomy solitary cells, planned
by the spirit of aristocracy, which deform the building no less to the
eye of taste than to the eye of benevolence, and insulating each family
within its separate enclosure, favour at once the pride of rank and the
laziness of indulgence.'[893] 'It is earnestly to be wished,' remarked
Dr. Sayers about the same time, 'that our churches were as free as those
of the continent from these vile incumbrances.' Their injury to
architectural effect was the least of their evils. They were fruitful,
he said, in jealousies, and utterly discordant to the worship of a God
who is no respecter of persons.[894]

Of the galleries, so often enumerated in Paterson's account of London
Churches (1714) among recently erected 'ornaments,' little need be said,
except that they were often wholly unnecessary, or only made necessary
by the great loss of space squandered in the promiscuous medley of
square and ill-shaped pews. It was an object of some ambition to have a
front seat in the gallery. 'The people of fashion exalt themselves in
church over the heads of the people of no fashion.'[895] A crowded
London church in the old times, gallery above gallery thronged with
people, was no doubt an impressive spectacle, not soon to be forgotten.
To many the thought of galleried churches will revive a different set of
remembrances. Dusky corners, a close and heavy atmosphere, back seats
for children and the scantily favoured, to which sound reached as a
drowsy hum, and where sight was limited to the heads of people in their
pews, to their hats upon the pillars, and perhaps a