"And the Philadelphia church?" said Eve, quickly, so soon as her curiosity was satisfied on the subject of the door; "I am now more impatient than ever, to learn what silly blunder we have also committed there."
"Impious would almost be a better term," Paul answered. "The only church spire that existed for half a century, in that town, was surmounted by a mitre, while the cross was studiously rejected!"
A silence followed; for there is often more true argument in simply presenting the facts of a case, than in all the rhetoric and logic that could be urged, by way of auxiliaries. Every one saw the egregious folly, not to say presumption, of the mistake; and at the moment, every one wondered how a common-sense community could have committed so indecent a blunder. We are mistaken. There was an exception to the general feeling in the person of Sir George Templemore. To his church-and-state notions, and anti-catholic prejudices, which were quite as much political as religious, there was every thing that was proper, and nothing that was wrong, in rejecting a cross for a mitre.
"The church, no doubt, was Episcopal, Powis," he remarked, "and it was not Roman. What better symbol than the mitre could be chosen?"
"Now I reflect, it is not so very strange," said Grace, eagerly, "for you will remember, Mr. Effingham, that Protestants attach the idea of idolatry to the cross, as it is used by Catholics."
"And of bishops, peers in parliament, church and state, to a mitre."
"Yes, but the church in question I have seen; and it was erected before the war of the revolution. It was an English rather than an American church."
"It was, indeed, an English church, rather than an American; and Templemore is very right to defend it, mitre and all."
"I dare say, a bishop officiated at its altar?"
"I dare say--nay, I know, he did; and, I will add, he would rather that the mitre were two hundred feet in the air, than down on his own simple, white-haired, apostolical-looking head. But enough of divinity for the morning; yonder is Tom with the boat, let us to our oars."