The case was quite different at Stanley Grove. The seriousness was without severity, and the cheerfulness had no mixture of levity. The family seemed more than usually animated, and there was a variety in the religious pursuits of the young people, enlivened by intervals of cheerful and improving conversation, which particularly struck Lady Belfield. She observed to me, that the difficulty of getting through the Sunday, without any mixture of worldly occupations or amusements on the one hand, or of disgust and weariness on the other, was among the many right things which she had never been able to accomplish in her own family. As we walked from church one Sunday, Miss Stanley told me that her father does not approve the habit of criticising the sermon. He says that the custom of pointing out the faults, can not be maintained without the custom of watching for them; that it gives the attention a wrong turn, and leads the hearer only to treasure up such passages as may serve for animadversion, and a display, not of Christian temper, but of critical skill. If the general tenor and principle be right, that is the main point they are to look to, and not to hunt for philosophical errors; that the hearer would do well to observe, whether it is not "he that sleeps," as often, at least, as "Homer nods:" a remark exemplified at church, as often as on the occasion which suggested it; that a critical spirit is the worst that can be brought out of church, being a symptom of an unhumbled mind, and an evidence that whatever the sermon may have done for others, it has not benefited the caviler. Here Mr. Stanley joined us. I found he did not encourage his family to take down the sermon. "It is no disparagement," said he, "to the discourse preached, to presume that there may be as good already printed. Why, therefore, not read the printed sermon at home in the evening, instead of that by which you ought to have been improving while it was delivering? If it be true that _faith cometh by hearing_, an inferior sermon, 'coming warm and instant from the heart,' assisted by all the surrounding solemnities which make a sermon _heard_, so different from one _read_, may strike more forcibly than an abler discourse coolly perused at home. In writing, the mechanical act must necessarily lessen the effect to the writer, and to the spectator it diminishes the dignity of the scene, and seems like short-hand writer taking down a trial. "But that, my daughters may not plead this as an excuse for inattention," continued he, "I make it a part of their evening duty to repeat what they retain, separately, to me in my library. The consciousness that this repetition will be required of them, stimulates their diligence; and the exercise itself not only strengthens the memory, but habituates to serious reflection."