" Every part of the floor is thickly carpeted. The pews
differ little from sofas, except in being more comfortable, and the
cushions for the feet or the knees are as soft as hair and cloth can
make them. It is a fashion, at present, to put the organ out of sight,
and to have a clock so unobtrusive as not to be observed. Galleries
are now viewed with an unfriendly eye by the projectors of churches,
and they are going out of use. Everything in the way of conspicuous
lighting apparatus, such as the gorgeous and dazzling chandeliers of
fifteen years ago, and the translucent globes of later date, is
discarded, and an attempt is sometimes made to hide the vulgar fact
that the church is ever open in the evening. In a word the design of
the fashionable church-builder of the present moment is to produce a
richly furnished, quietly adorned, dimly illuminated, ecclesiastical
parlor, in which a few hundred ladies and gentlemen, attired in
kindred taste, may sit perfectly at their ease, and see no object not
in harmony with the scene around them.
To say that the object of these costly and elegant arrangements is to
repel poor people would be a calumny.
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