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194 THE SUSSEX COAST
including a rood pillar and a pulpit to the young soldier to whom this work is dedicated. In a community that owed its existence to fishing the dedication of this church to St. Peter might appear the very summit of decorous propriety, but such it did not seem to Horsfield, the Presbyterian historian of the county, who rather petulantly and irrelevantly comments, "Now that the mummeries of Popery are avowedly condemned by all enlightened Christians, and the idolatry of the mass and the absurdity of transubstantiation itself, is clearly seen by all Protestant worshippers to be not more discordant with Christian verity than is the invocation of saints. Why the names of our churches are to perpetuate the remembrance of Popish legends and tales of superstition, we leave to be determined by theological iEdipuses."
Brighton has a good many modern Gothic churches of interest, in fact the whole course of the development of the revived style may be studied in outline from examples within the town. One of the most interesting ecclesiastically, from having been the scene of the labours of F. W. Robertson (Holy Trinity), is, however, quite devoid of any architectural beauty. How so large a place contrives to flourish and increase without any considerable industries is really difficult to explain; the chief employer of labour is the Municipality, which manages its own electric trams; the next is the Railway, which has considerable shops in Brighton. But undoubtedly one great resource is the large number of schools, both public and private. They are not a novelty; an old Brighton worthy was John Grover, who lived between 1677 and 1752, and was Quaker, shepherd-boy, maltster, schoolmaster, and mathematician. Here is a sample |
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