f the tones betrayed
the depth of feeling with which each syllable escaped from the heart. Talk
of liturgies impairing the fervour of prayer! This may be the fact with
those who are immersed in themselves while communing with God, and cannot
consent even to pray without placing their own thoughts and language,
however ill-digested and crude, uppermost in the business of the moment.
Do not such persons know that, as respects united worship, their own
prayers are, to all intents and purposes, a formulary to their listeners,
with the disadvantage of being received without preparation or direction
to the mind?--nay, too often substituting a critical and prurient
curiosity for humble and intelligent prayer? In these later times, when
Christianity is re-assuming the character of the quarrels of sects, and,
as an old man who has lived, and hopes to die, in communion with the
Anglo-American church, I do not wish to exculpate my own particular branch
of the Catholic body from blame; but, in these later times, when
Christianity is returning to its truculency, forgetful of the chiefest of
virtues, Charity, I have often recalled the scene of that solemn
noon-tide, and asked myself the question, "if any man could have heard
Lucy, as I did, on that occasion, concluding with the petition which
Christ himself gave to his disciples as a comprehensive rule, if not
absolutely as a formulary, and imagine the heart could not fully accompany
words that had been previously prescribed?"

No sooner had Lucy's solemn tones ceased than I passed through the crowd
of weeping and still kneeling blacks, and entered my sister's room. Grace
was reclining in an easy chair; her eyes closed, her hands clasped
together, but lying on her knees, and her whole attitude and air
proclaiming a momentary but total abstraction of the spirit. I do not
think she heard my footstep at all, and I stood at her side an instant,
uncertain whether to let her know of my presence, or not. At this instant
I caught the eye of Lucy, who seemed intent on the wish to speak to me.
Grace had three or four small rooms that communicated with each other, in
her part of the dwelling; and into one of these, which served as a sort of
_boudoir_, though the name was then unknown in America, I followed the
dear girl, whose speaking but sad look had bidden me do so.

"Is my father near at hand?" Lucy asked, with an interest I did not
understand, since she must have known he intended to remai