From _Ruth_.
This is a beautiful description of the old Unitarian chapel at
Knutsford as it is to-day. In the burial-ground is the grave of
Mrs. Gaskell.
The chapel was up a narrow street, or rather _cul-de-sac_, close by. It
stood on the outskirts of the town, almost in fields. It was built about
the time of Matthew and Philip Henry, when the Dissenters were afraid
of attracting attention or observation and hid their places of worship
in obscure and out-of-the-way parts of the towns in which they were
built. Accordingly, it often happened, as in the present case, that the
buildings immediately surrounding, as well as the chapels themselves,
looked as if they carried you back to a period a hundred and fifty years
ago. The chapel had a picturesque and old-world look, for luckily the
congregation had been too poor to rebuild it, or new face it in George
the Third’s time. The staircases which led to the galleries were outside,
at each end of the building, and the irregular roof and worn stone steps
looked grey and stained by time and weather. The grassy hillock, each
with a little upright headstone, were shaded by a grand old wych-elm. A
lilac bush or two, a white rose tree, and a few laburnums, all old and
gnarled enough, were planted round the chapel yard; and the casement
windows of the chapel were made of heavy-leaded, diamond-shaped panes,
almost covered with ivy, producing a green gloom, not without its
solemnity, within. This ivy was the home of an infinite number of little
birds, which twittered and warbled, till it might have been thought that
they were emulous of the power of praise possessed by the human creatures
within, with such earnest, long-drawn strains did this crowd of winged
songsters rejoice and be glad in their beautiful gift of life. The
interior of the building was plain and simple as plain and simple could
be. When it was fitted up, oak timber was much cheaper than it is now,
so the woodwork was all of that description; but roughly hewed, for the
early builders had not much wealth to spare. The walls were whitewashed,
and were recipients of the shadows of the beauty without; on their “white
plains” the tracery of the ivy might be seen, now still, now stirred by
the sudden flight of some little bird. The congregation consisted of here
and there a farmer with his labourers, who came down from the uplands
beyond the town to worship where their fathers worshipped, and who loved
the place because they knew how much those fathers had suffered for it,
although they never troubled themselves with the reason why they left the
parish church; of a few shopkeepers, far more thoughtful and reasoning,
who were Dissenters from conviction, unmixed with old ancestral
association; and of one or two families of still higher worldly station.
With many poor, who were drawn there by love for Mr. Benson’s character,
and by a feeling that the faith which made him what he was could not be
far wrong, for the base of the pyramid, and with Mr. Bradshaw for its
apex, the congregation stood complete.
The country people came in sleeking down their hair, and treading with
earnest attempts at noiseless lightness of step over the floor of the
aisle; and by and by, when all were assembled, Mr. Benson followed
unmarshalled and unattended. When he had closed the pulpit door, and
knelt in prayer for an instant or two, he gave out a psalm from the dear
old Scottish paraphrase, with its primitive inversion of the simple
perfect Bible words; and a kind of precentor stood up, and, having
sounded the note on a pitch-pipe, sang a couple of lines by way of
indicating the tune; then all the congregation stood up, and sang aloud.