Outside the City
precincts, if you please, where there were few churches and great
parishes, always increasing in population, the poor were neglected;
but in the City, never. But listen, the Rector has done. He finishes
his sermon with an admirable and appropriate quotation in Greek, which
I hope the congregation understands; he pronounces the prayer of
dismissal; the organ rolls, the clerk wakes up, the Lord Mayor and the
Sheriffs walk forth and get into their coaches, the footmen climb up
behind, the merchants and their families go out next, while all the
people stand in respect to their masters and betters, and those set in
authority over them. Then come out the people themselves, and last of
all the 'prentice boys come clattering down the aisle.
Let us awake. It is Sunday morning again, but the merchants are gone.
The eighteenth century is gone, the church is empty, the parish is
deserted; the streets are silent.
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep;
The river glideth at his own sweet will!
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep,
And all that mighty heart to lying still.
A RIVERSIDE PARISH
There are several riverside parishes east of London Bridge, not
counting the ancient towns of Deptford and Greenwich, which formerly
lay beyond London, and could not be reckoned as suburbs.
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