--those who travel by the mail. Of the persons who are
convinced that there never was an Architect of the Universe, and
that Man sprang from the Mollusc, I know little or nothing: they
mostly travel two and two, in gigs, and have quarrelled so
dreadfully on the way, that, at the Inn, they don't speak to one
another. The commonalty, I repeat, are losing their hopes of
heaven, just as the grown-up schoolboy finds his paradise no more
in home. I can remember when divines were never tired of painting
the lily, of indulging in the most glowing descriptions of the
Elysian Fields. A popular artist once drew a picture of them: 'The
Plains of Heaven' it was called, and the painter's name was Martin.
If he was to do so now, the public (who are vulgar) would exclaim
'Betty Martin.' Not that they disbelieve in it, but that the
attractions of the place are dying out, like those of Bath and
Cheltenham.

Of course some blame attaches to the divines themselves that things
have come to such a pass. 'I protest,' says a great philosopher,
'that I never enter a church, but the man in the pulpit talks so
unlike a man, as though he had never known what human joys or
sorrows are--so carefully avoids every subject of interest save
_one_, and paints that in colours at once so misty and so
meretricious--that I say to myself, I will never sit under him
again.' This may, of course, be only an ingenious excuse of his for
not going to church; but there is really something in it. The
angels, with their harps, on clouds, are now presented to the eyes,
even of faith, in vain; they are still appreciated on canvas by an
old master, but to become one of them is no longer the common
aspiration. There is a suspicion, partly owing, doubtless, to the
modern talk about the dignity and even the divinity of Labour, that
they ought to be doing something else than (as the American poet
puts it with characteristic ii reverence) 'loafing about the
throne;' that we ourselves, with no ear perhaps for music, and with
little voice (alas!) for praise, should take no pleasure in such
avocations. It is not the sceptics--though their influence is
getting to be considerable--who have wrought this change, but the
conditions of modern life. Notwithstanding the cheerful 'returns'
as to pauperism, and the glowing speeches of our Chancellors of the
Exchequer, these conditions are far harder, among the thin