ivines, the students of a great
University, are all there to listen. The pageant does but fitly
represent the great moral fact which is before us; I understand _this_.
I don't call _this_ fudge; what I mean by fudge is, outside without
inside. Now I must say, the sermon itself, and not the least of all the
prayer before it--what do they call it?"

"The bidding prayer," said Reding.

"Well, both sermon and prayer are often arrant fudge. I don't often go
to University sermons, but I have gone often enough not to go again
without compulsion. The last preacher I heard was from the country. Oh,
it was wonderful! He began at the pitch of his voice, 'Ye shall pray.'
What stuff! 'Ye shall _pray_;' because old Latimer or Jewell said, 'Ye
shall praie,' therefore we must not say, 'Let us pray.' Presently he
brought out," continued Sheffield, assuming a pompous and up-and-down
tone, "'especially for that pure and apostolic branch of it
_established_,'--here the man rose on his toes, '_established_ in these
dominions.' Next came, 'for our Sovereign Lady Victoria, Queen, Defender
of the Faith, in all causes and over all persons, ecclesiastical as well
as civil, within these her dominions, _supreme_'--an awful pause, with
an audible fall of the sermon-case on the cushion; as though nature did
not contain, as if the human mind could not sustain, a bigger thought.
Then followed, 'the pious and munificent founder,' in the same twang,
'of All Saints' and Leicester Colleges,' But his _chef-d'oeuvre_ was
his emphatic recognition of '_all_ the doctors, _both_ the proctors', as
if the numerical antithesis had a graphic power, and threw those
excellent personages into a charming _tableau vivant_."

Charles was amused at all this; but he said in answer, that he never
heard a sermon but it was his own fault if he did not gain good from it;
and he quoted the words of his father, who, when he one day asked him if
so-and-so had not preached a very good sermon, "My dear Charles," his
father had said, "all sermons are good." The words, simple as they were,
had retained a hold on his memory.

Meanwhile, they had proceeded down the forbidden High Street, and were
crossing the bridge, when, on the opposite side, they saw before them a
tall, upright man, whom Sheffield had no difficulty in recognizing as a
bachelor of Nun's Hall, and a bore at least of the second magnitude. He
was in cap and gown, but went on his way, as if intending, in that
extraor