The Sunday sanctums and Sabbath conventicles of today may be mere ornate, may be more flashy, and show more symptoms of polished bedizenment in their construction; but three-fourths of them sink into dwarflings and mediocrities when compared with the rare old buildings of the past.

Driven from the churches, they held conventicles in houses.

In most cases interest proved more powerful than principle; and it was observed that out of the numbers, who at first crowded to the Anabaptist conventicle at Dublin as a profession of their political creed, almost all who had any thing to lose, gradually abandoned it for the more courtly places of worship.

Now this lively lady knew nothing of Nonconformists, except that they were unfashionable: she did not distinguish one conventicle from another, and Mr Apollos with his enlightened interpretations seemed to her as heavy a bore, if not quite so ridiculous, as Mr Johns could have been with his solemn twang at the Baptist chapel in the lowest suburbs, or as a local preacher among the Methodists.

The preachers in the conventicles throughout the land denounced the king in terms of the greatest violence, and in almost every town the citizens were arming and drilling.