readings, and partially vividly illuminated by occasional gleams of
strong sunlight which poured suddenly through the colored windows,
presented a beautiful picture. The service was very well performed:
the organ is a remarkably good one, and one or two of the boys'
voices were exquisitely soft and clear. It is a fine service, and
yet I do not like it by way of religious worship. It does not make
me devout, in the proper form of the term; it appeals too much to
my senses and my imagination; it is religion _set_ to music and
painting, and artistic religion does not suit me. The incessant
passing of people through the church, too, disturbs one, and gives
an unpleasant air of irreverence to the whole.... I think I might
like to go to a cathedral for afternoon service, much as I like to
spend my Sunday leisure in reading Milton, though I should not be
satisfied to make my whole devotional _exercises_ consist in
reading "Paradise Lost." A wretchedly weak, poor sermon; how
strange that such a theme should inspire nothing better than such a
discourse! However, I suppose this sort of ministering is the
inevitable result of a "ministry" embraced merely as a means of
subsistence. No one could paint pictures or compose music, _only_
because they wanted bread, so I do not see why any one should
preach sermons fit to be heard, only because they want bread. If I
was a despot, I would suppress hebdomadal writing of sermons, and
people should be _forbidden_ instead of _bidden_ to talk nonsense
upon sacred subjects.

_Monday, 11th._--At night the theater was very full, and the
audience pleasant. During supper my father, Charles Mason, and I
had a long discussion about Kean. I cannot help thinking my father
wrong about him. Kean _is_ a man of decided genius, no matter how
he neglects or abuses nature's good gift. He has it. He has the
first element of all greatness--power. No taste, perhaps, and no
industry, perhaps; but let his deficiencies be what they may, his
faults however obvious, his conceptions however erroneous, and his
characters, each considered as a whole, however imperfect, he has
the one atoning faculty that compensates for everything else, that
seizes, rivets, electrifies all who see and hear him, and stirs
down to their very springs the passion