the time till sermon was done."
Sometimes he goes further, as at St. Dunstan's, where "I heard an able
sermon of the minister of the place; and stood by a pretty, modest maid,
whom I did labour to take by the hand; but she would not, but got
further and further from me; and, at last, I could perceive her to take
pins out of her pocket to prick me if I should touch her again--which,
seeing, I did forbear, and was glad I did spy her design."

He visits cathedrals, and tries to be impressed by them, but more
interesting things are again at hand. At Rochester, "had no mind to stay
there, but rather to our inne, the White Hart, where we drank." At
Canterbury he views the Minster and the remains of Beckett's tomb, but
adds, "A good handsome wench I kissed, the first that I have seen a
great while." There is something ludicrously incongruous about the idea
of Samuel Pepys in a cathedral, just as there is about his presence in
the Great Plague and Fire. Among any of these grand phenomena he is
altogether out of scale. He is a fly in a thunderstorm.

His religious life and thought are an amazing complication. He can
lament the decay of piety with the most sanctimonious. He remembers God
continually, and thanks and praises Him for each benefit as it comes,
with evident honesty and refreshing gratitude. He signs and seals his
last will and testament, "which is to my mind, and I hope to the liking
of God Almighty." But in all this there is a curious consciousness, as
of one playing to a gallery of unseen witnesses, human or celestial. On
a fast-day evening he sings in the garden "till my wife put me in mind
of its being a fast-day; and so I was sorry for it, and stopped, and
home to cards." He does not indeed appear to regard religion as a matter
merely for sickness and deathbeds. When he hears that the Prince, when
in apprehension of death, is troubled, but when told that he will
recover, is merry and swears and laughs and curses like a man in health,
he is shocked. Pepys' religion is the same in prosperous and adverse
hours, a thing constantly in remembrance, and whose demands a gentleman
can easily satisfy. But his conscience is of that sort which requires an
audience, visible or invisible. He hates dissimulation in other people,
but he himself is acting all the time. "But, good God! what an age is
this, and what a world is this! that a man cannot live without playing
the knave and dissimulation."

Thus his religion gave him n