.

It appears to us a question whether any clergyman can go through our
church service with decorum, morning after morning, in an immense
building, surrounded by not more than a dozen listeners. The best
actors cannot act well before empty benches, and though there is, of
course, a higher motive in one case than the other, still even the
best of clergymen cannot but be influenced by their audience; and to
expect that a duty should be well done under such circumstances, would
be to require from human nature more than human power.

When the two ladies with the gilt crosses, the old man with his
crutch, and the still palpitating housemaid were going, Mr Harding
found himself obliged to go too. The verger stood in his way, and
looked at him and looked at the door, and so he went. But he returned
again in a few minutes, and re-entered with another twopence. There
was no other sanctuary so good for him.

As he walked slowly down the nave, and then up one aisle, and then
again down the nave and up the other aisle, he tried to think gravely
of the step he was about to take. He was going to give up eight
hundred a year voluntarily; and doom himself to live for the rest of
his life on about a hundred and fifty. He knew that he had hitherto
failed to realise this fact as he ought to do. Could he maintain
his own independence and support his daughter on a hundred and fifty
pounds a year without being a burden on anyone? His son-in-law was
rich, but nothing could induce him to lean on his son-in-law after
acting, as he intended to do, in direct opposition to his son-in-law's
counsel. The bishop was rich, but he was about to throw away the
bishop's best gift, and that in a manner to injure materially the
patronage of the giver: he could neither expect nor accept anything
further from the bishop. There would be not only no merit, but
positive disgrace, in giving up his wardenship, if he were not
prepared to meet the world without it. Yes, he must from this time
forward bound all his human wishes for himself and his daughter to
the poor extent of so limited an income. He knew he had not thought
sufficiently of this, that he had been carried away by enthusiasm,
and had hitherto not brought home to himself the full reality of his
position.

He thought most about his daughter, naturally. It was true that she
was engaged, and he knew enough of his proposed son-in-law to be sure
that his own altered circumstances would mak