the carved chairs set along both walls between the communion rails and
the first steps of the altar were for the divines. The president and
vice-president knelt facing each other. The priests, deacons, and
sub-deacons followed according to their rank. There were slenderer
benches, and these were for the choir; and from a music-book placed on
wings of the great golden eagle, the leader conducted the singing.

The side altar, with the rich Turkey carpet spread over the steps, was
St George's, and further on, in an addition made lately, there were two
more altars, dedicated respectively to the Virgin and St Joseph.

"The maid-servants kneel in that corner. I have often suggested
that they should be moved out of sight. You do not understand me.
Protestantism has always been more reconciled to the presence of women
in sacred places than we. We would wish them beyond the precincts. And
it is easy to imagine how the unspeakable feminality of those
maid-servants jars a beautiful impression--the altar towering white with
wax candles, the benedictive odour of incense, the richness of the
vestments, treble voices of boys floating, and the sweetness of a long
day spent about the sanctuary with flowers and chalices in my hands,
fade in a sense of sullen disgust, in a revulsion of feeling which I
will not attempt to justify."

Then his thoughts, straying back to sudden recollections of monastic
usages and habits, he said:

"I should like to scourge them out of this place." And then, half
playfully, half seriously, and wholly conscious of the grotesqueness,
he added: