Celia remained silent for a minute. The mention of Dr. Braithwaite's sermons had opened up a vein of thought. She wondered if anywhere there were men who preached sermons of a different kind from his, such as she and even old Cicely might understand, and from which they could derive benefit. Was there any preacher who, instead of enlarging on the Angelical Doctor, was satisfied to keep to Jesus Christ and Him crucified? A wild desire sprang up in her heart to go to London, and hear the great men who preached before the Queen. She did not mention this to Cicely. Celia knew full well that it would appear to her not only preposterous, but absolutely perilous. Harry was the only member of the family who had ever visited the metropolis, and this by virtue of Her Majesty's commission. The Squire considered it a hot-bed of all evil, physical, moral, and political. Had he walked down the Strand, he would honestly have suspected every man he met to be a Jesuit in disguise, or at the least a Jacobite, which he thought scarcely better. He believed that the air of the capital was close and pestilential, that all honesty and morality were banished from its borders, that all the men in it--with the exception of the Duke of Marlborough and the Whig Ministers--were arrant rogues, and all the women--excluding the Queen and the Duchess of Marlborough--were heartless and unprincipled. There was some ground for his belief, but he sometimes excepted the wrong persons. All these facts and feelings floated through Celia's mind, and she felt that to bring her wishes to light would probably hinder their accomplishment. She sat silent and thoughtful. "Cicely," she asked at length, rather abruptly, "do you not find some parts of the Bible very hard to understand?" "A vast sight, my dear!" said Cicely; "a vast sight! Sure there's a deal that's main hard to a poor old ignorant body such as me." "Then what do you do, Cicely, when you come to a piece that you cannot understand?" "Leave it alone, my dear. There's somewhat about the middle of the Book--I can't say the words right, never has 'em pat--about the road being made so straight and smooth like that the very fools can't shape to lose the way. Well, I think the Book's a bit like that itself. For I am a fool, Mrs. Celia, and I won't go to deny it. Surely God will show me all I want, and all that's meant for me, thinks I; and so what I can't understand I think ben't for the likes of me, and I leave it to them 'tis meant for." "Now all about those Jews, on their way to the Promised Land, and the forty years they spent in the wilderness,--I cannot see what that has to do with us." "Eh! Mrs. Celia, my dear, don't you go to say that!" urged old Cicely, earnestly. "Wasn't they hard-hearted and stiff-necked folks? and ben't we hard-hearteder and stiff-neckeder?" "But is it not very gloomy, Cicely, to be always thinking of death, and judgment, and such horrid things?" said Celia, with a little shudder.