If we have dwelt at length upon the bells of St. Michael's it is because they speak so truly the real personality of the town. The church itself is not of less interest. And the churchyard that surrounds it upon two sides is as filled with charm and rare flavor as any churchyard we have ever seen. Under its old stones sleep forever the folk who lived in Charleston in the days of her glories—Pringles and Pinckneys; Moultries; those three famous "R's" of South Carolina—Rutledge and Ravenel and Rhett—the names within that silent place read like the roster of the colonial aristocracy. Above the silent markers, the moldering and crumbling tombs, rises a riot of God's growing things; in the soft southern air a perpetual tribute to the dead—narcissus, oleander, jessamine, the stately Pride of India bush. And on the morning that we first strolled into the shady, quiet place a red-bird—the famous Cardinal Crossbeak of the south—sang to us from his perch in a magnolia tree. Twenty-four hours before and we had crossed the Hudson river at New York in a driving and a blizzard-threatening snowstorm.
The greatest charm of St. Michael's does not rest alone within the little paths of her high-walled churchyard. Within the sturdy church, in the serenity of her sanctuary, in the great square box-pews where sat so many years the elect of Charleston, of the very Southland you might say; in the high-set pulpit and the unusual desk underneath where sat the old time "clark" to read the responses and the notices; even the stately pew, set aside from all the others, in which General Washington sat on the occasion of a memorable visit to the South Carolina town, is the fullness of her charm. If you are given imagination, you can see the brown and white church filled as in the old days with the planters and their families—generation after generation of them, coming first to the church, being baptized in its dove-crowned font at the door and then, years later, being carried out of that center aisle for the final time. You can see the congregations of half a century ago, faces white and set and determined. You can see one memorable congregation, as it hears the crash of a Federal shell against the heavy tower, and then listen to the gentle rector finishing the implication of the Litany before he dismisses his little flock.
Dear old St. Michael's! The years—the sunny years and the tragic years—set lightly upon her. When war and storm have wrecked her, it has been her children and her children's children who have arisen to help wipe away the scars. In a memorable storm of August, 1885, the great wooden ball at the top of her weather vane, one hundred and eighty-five feet above the street was sent hurtling down to the ground. They will show you the dent it made in the pavement flag. It was quickly replaced. But within a year worse than cyclone was upon St. Michael's—the memorable earthquake which sank the great tower eight inches deeper into the earth. And only last year another of the fearful summer storms that come now and then upon the place wreaked fearful damage upon the old church. Yet St. Michael's has been patiently repaired each time; she still towers above these disasters—as her quaint weather-vane towers above the town, itself.
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St. Michael's churchyard, Charleston—a veritable roster of the Colonial Elect
After St. Michael's, St. Philip's—although St. Philip's is the real mother church of all Charleston. The old town does not pin her faith upon a single lion. The first time we found our way down Meeting street, we saw a delicate and belfried spire rising above the greenery of the trees in a distant churchyard. The staunch church from which that spire springs was well worth our attention. And so we found our way to St. Philip's. We turned down Broad street from St. Michael's—to commercial Charleston as its namesake street is to New York—then at the little red-brick library, housed in the same place for nearly three-quarters of a century, we turned again. The south portico of St. Philip's, tall-columned, dignified almost beyond expression, confronted us. And a moment later we found ourselves within a churchyard that ranked in interest and importance with that of St. Michael's, itself.
A shambling negro care-taker came toward us. He had been engaged in helping some children get a kitten down from the upper branches of a tree in the old churchyard. With the intuition of his kind, he saw in us, strangers—manifest possibilities. He devoted himself to attention upon us. And he sounded the praises of his own exhibit in no mild key.
"Yessa—de fines' church in all de South," he said, as he swung the great door of St. Philip's wide open. He seemed to feel, also intuitively, that we had just come from the rival exhibit. And we felt more than a slight suspicion of jealousy within the air.
The negro was right. St. Philip's, Charleston, is more than the finest church in all the South. Perhaps it is not too much to say that it is the most beautiful church in all the land. Copied, rather broadly, from St. Martins-in-the-Fields, London, it thrusts itself out into the street, indeed, makes the highway take a broad double curve in order to pass its front portico. But St. Philip's commits the fearful Charleston sin of being new. The present structure has only been thrusting its nose out into Church street for a mere eighty years. The old St. Philip's was burned—one of the most fearful of all Charleston tragedies—in 1834.