The effect of processions in the churches, must have been very striking. A person sometimes inquires the use of a large portion of unappropriated room in some of our old ecclesiastical edifices; he is especially astonished at the enormous unoccupied space in a cathedral, and asks, “what is it for?”—the answer is, at this time, nothing. But if the Stuarts had succeeded in reestablishing the catholic religion, then this large and now wholly useless portion of the structure, would have been devoted to the old practices. In that event, we should have had cross-carrying, canopy-carrying, censing, chanting, flower-strewing, and all the other accessories and essentials of the grand pageantry, which distinguishes catholic from protestant worship. The utmost stretch of episcopal ceremonial in England, can scarcely extend to the use of an eighth part of any of our old cathedrals, each of which, in every essential particular as a building, is papal.
[139] Butler.
[140] Brand.
[141] Strype.
[142] Ibid.
May 9.
St. Gregory Nazianzen, A. D. 389, or 391. St. Hermas, 1st Cent. St. Nicholas Bp. A. D. 1391.
May Morning.