We have a church, by-the-by, of course - a hideous temple of flint,
like a great petrified haystack. Our chief clerical dignitary,
who, to his honour, has done much for education both in time and
money, and has established excellent schools, is a sound, shrewd,
healthy gentleman, who has got into little occasional difficulties
with the neighbouring farmers, but has had a pestilent trick of
being right. Under a new regulation, he has yielded the church of
our watering-place to another clergyman. Upon the whole we get on
in church well. We are a little bilious sometimes, about these
days of fraternisation, and about nations arriving at a new and
more unprejudiced knowledge of each other (which our Christianity
don't quite approve), but it soon goes off, and then we get on very
well.

There are two dissenting chapels, besides, in our small watering-
place; being in about the proportion of a hundred and twenty guns
to a yacht. But the dissension that has torn us lately, has not
been a religious one. It has arisen on the novel question of Gas.
Our watering-place has been convulsed by the agitation, Gas or No
Gas. It was never reasoned why No Gas, but there was a great No
Gas party. Broadsides were printed and stuck about - a startling
circumstance in our watering-place. The No Gas party rested
content with chalking 'No Gas!' and 'Down with Gas!' and other such
angry war-whoops, on the few back gates and scraps of wall which
the limits of our watering-place afford; but the Gas party printed
and posted bills, wherein they took the high ground of proclaiming
against the No Gas party, that it was said Let there be light and
there was light; and that not to have light (that is gas-light) in
our watering-place, was to contravene the great decree. Whether by
these thunderbolts or not, the No Gas party were defeated; and in