rate, it is safer to leave people to their own devices on such
subjects. Every body likes to go their own way - to choose their own time and
manner of devotion. The obligation of attendance, the formality, the restraint,
the length of time - altogether it is a formidable thing, and what nobody likes:
and if the good people who used to kneel and gape in that gallery could have
foreseen that the time would ever come when men and women might lie another ten
minutes in bed, when they woke with a headach, without danger of reprobation,
because chapel was missed, they would have jumped with joy and envy. Cannot you
imagine with what unwilling feelings the former belles of the house of Rushworth
did many a time repair to this chapel? The young Mrs. Eleanors and Mrs. Bridgets
- starched up into seeming piety, but with heads full of something very
different - especially if the poor chaplain were not worth looking at - and, in
those days, I fancy parsons were very inferior even to what they are now.«
    For a few moments she was unanswered. Fanny coloured and looked at Edmund,
but felt too angry for speech; and he needed a little recollection before he
could say, »Your lively mind can hardly be serious even on serious subjects. You
have given us an amusing sketch, and human nature cannot say it was not so. We
must all feel at times the difficulty of fixing our thoughts as we could wish;
but if you are supposing it a frequent thing, that is to say, a weakness grown
into a habit from neglect, what could be expected from the private devotions of
such persons? Do you think the minds which are suffered, which are indulged in
wanderings in a chapel, would be more collected in a closet?«
    »Yes, very likely. They would have two chances at least in their favour.
There would be less to distract the attention from without, and it would not be
tried so long.«
    »The mind which does not struggle against itself under one circumstance,
would find objects to distract it in the other, I believe; and the influence of
the place and of example may often rouse better feelings than are begun with.
The greater length of the service, however, I admit to be sometimes too hard a
stretch upon the mind. One wishes it were not so - but I have not yet left
Oxford long enough to forget what chapel prayers are.«
    While this was passing, the rest of the party being scattered about the
chapel, Julia called Mr. Crawford's