There is no character of an ordinary modern English church which appears to me more to be regretted than the peculiar pompousness of the furniture of the pulpits, contrasted, as it generally is, with great meagreness and absence of colour in the other portions of the church; a pompousness, besides, altogether without grace or meaning, and dependent merely on certain applications of upholstery; which, curiously enough, are always in worse taste than those even of our drawing-rooms. Nor do I understand how our congregations can endure the aspect of the wooden sounding-board, attached only by one point of its circumference to an upright pillar behind the preacher; and looking as if the weight of its enormous leverage must infallibly, before the sermon is concluded, tear it from its support, and bring it down upon the preacher's head. These errors in taste and feeling will, however, I believe, be gradually amended as more Gothic churches are built; but the question of the position of the pulpit presents a more disputable ground of discussion.