23Nov1862, The church is something dreadful

CHATSWORTH, 23rd Sunday after Trinity, November 23rd, 1862.
—Fine bright day. The church (to which we went in the morng) is something too dreadful : behind the altar and sitting upon the E. window, which it entirely hides, is a hideous and purely heathen monument of two brothers (one a skeleton) supported on one side by Mars and a suit of armour, on the other by Minerva and a peer's robes ; the whole surmounted by a clumsy trumpeting angel (or Cupid ?) What words can describe the worse than Smithfield pens we were jammed into ? and in which the care necessary to avoid falling foul of everyone's eye, kicking everyone's hat, and sitting upon everyone's lap, was most oppressive. Oh dear ! how can people go Sunday after Sunday to such a place, and think they are worshipping God in the beauty of holiness ? Scott has, however, made a plan for a new church.