nalysis we
might amuse ourselves with observing what a sudden simplicity of taste
may be gained simply by a rush from town. There is a pleasant irony in
being denounced from pulpit and platform as jaded voluptuaries, and
then finding ourselves able to trample through coppices and plunge into
cowsheds as if we had never seen a cowshed or a coppice before. But
there is more than the pleasure of surprise in the peculiar rural
development of attendance at church. Piety brings its own reward. We
find ourselves invested with a new domestic interest, and brought into
far closer and warmer domestic relations. Mamma looks a great deal more
benignant than usual, and the girls lean on one's arm with a more
trustful confidence and a deeper sympathy.

A new bond of family union has been found in that victory of the pew
over the club-window. But earthly pleasure is always dashed with a
little disappointment, and one drop of bitterness lingers in the cup of
joy. If only Charlie and papa would remain awake during the sermon! They
are so good in the Psalms, so attentive through the Lessons, so sternly
responsive to each Commandment, that it is sad to see them edging
towards the comfortable corners with the text, and fast asleep under the
application. Then, too, there is so little hope of reform, not merely
because on this point men are utterly obdurate, but because it is
impossible for their reformers even to understand their obduracy. For
with both the whole question is a pure question of sympathy. Men sleep
under sermons because the whole temper of their minds, as they grow into
a larger culture, drifts further and further from the very notion of
preaching. Inquiry, quiet play of thought, a somewhat indolent
appreciation of the various sides of every subject, an appetite for
novelty, a certain shrinking from the definite, a certain pleasure in
the vague--these characteristics of modern minds are hardly
characteristics of the pulpit. There are, of course, your drawing-room
spouters, who can reel off an artistic or poetic or critical discourse
of any length on the rug. But, as a rule, men neither like to pump upon
their kind nor to be pumped upon. They like a quiet, genial talk which
turns over everything and settles nothing. They like to put their case,
to put their objection, but they like both to be brief and tentative. As
a rule they talk with their guard up, and say nothing about their deeper
thoughts or feelings. They vote a man w