There was another case, last Saturday, of a charge against
a man, —apparently of education,—for going to church on purpose to -disturb a ritualistic service and annoy the Ritualists. Mr. Langston, of Dalston,—the Hackney region seems great in persons of this .class,—was summoned before the Lord Mayor for attending St. Ethelburga Church, Bishopsgate, and being there guilty of violent and indecent behaviour. Mr. Langston appears to have coughed spasmodically,—with voluntary spasms, as the rector thought,— when the incense was thrown up, and to have waved his hat and wagged grotesquely his arms and legs during the Communion Service. The Lord Mayor said that the evidence of indecent behaviour and of vexatiously annoying the rector and the preacher was quite convincing, and he ordered the defendant (Mr. Langston) to pay the costs, and to be imprisoned for a month. This severe punishment was, however, changed, at the intercession of the plaintiff's attorney, for a penalty of Si. in addi- tion to the costs, on Mr. Langston giving his promise not to repeat the offence. Such persons as Mr. Langston surely cannot see that they caricature very much, and in the most offensive way, the folly of Ritualism itself. Nothing can be more pitiable than a superstitious belief in incense and processions,—except a super- stitious (and also unmannerly) abhorrence of them.
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