In the annals of Dunstable Priory is this item: “In 1483, made a clock over the pulpit.”
A stand for a hour-glass still remains in many pulpits. A rector of Bibury used to preach two hours, regularly turning the glass. After the text, the esquire of the parish withdrew, smoked his pipe, and returned to the blessing. Lecturers’ pulpits have also hour-glasses. The priest had sometimes a watch found him by the parish.[127]
[127] Fosbroke’s British Monachism.
Easter.
RESTORATION OF THE CATHOLIC RELIGION IN FRANCE.
The catholic religion was that in which the French were brought up; and they were, from habit at least, if not from conviction, attached to it: so far was its overthrow from meeting with the general approbation and concurrence of the nation, that if it was acquiesced in for a time, it was merely from a feeling of inability to avert the blow; and the persecution which it experienced only served, as all persecution does, to endear the object of it more strongly to them.
Such would have been the effect, even if the attempt made had only been to substitute by force some other mode of faith in its place; but when the question was to annihilate religion itself, no sane mind could possibly dream of ultimate success. The sense of dependence upon some unseen power far above our comprehension, is a principle inherent in human nature;—no nation has yet been discovered, how remote soever from civilisation in its customs and manners, in which some ideas of a power superior to all earthly ones were not to be found.
The French are generally characterised as fond of novelty, and always seeking after it with eagerness; and yet, however paradoxical it may appear, it is no less true, that in many respects no people adhere more tenaciously to ancient habits and customs. Nothing contributed so essentially to the final overthrow of the violent revolutionists—no, not even the horror excited by the torrents of blood which they shed—as their endeavouring all at once to deprive the people of many habits and customs which they particularly cherished; nor did any thing contribute more strongly to Bonaparte’s power, than his restoring them.