The type of character formed under such culture partook largely of a mediæval spirit. The saints of the Church were cherished models. The festivals of the Church were seasons for joy, its fasts for sorrow. The liturgy of the Church stereotyped the expressions of devotion, almost as much in its private as in its public exercise. The ministers of the Church were regarded more as priests than teachers, and their spiritual counsel and consolations were sought with a feeling, not foreign to that in which Romanists approach the confessional. The sacraments of the Church were received with awe, if not with trembling, as the mystic vehicles of salvation; and the whole History of the Church, its persecution and prosperity, its endurance and achievements, its conflicts and victories, were connected in the minds of such persons with the ancient edifices in which they worshipped. The cathedral and even many village choirs told them of "the glorious company of the Apostles," "the goodly fellowship of the prophets," and "the noble army of martyrs," and "the Holy Church throughout all the world." They loved to see those holy ones carved in stone and emblazoned in coloured glass. A dim religious light was in harmony with their grave and subdued temper. The lofty Gothic roof, the long-drawn aisle, the fretted vault, and the pavement solemnly echoing every footfall, had in their eyes a mysterious charm. The external, the visible, and the symbolic, more exalted their souls than anything abstract, argumentative, and doctrinal: yet, though their understanding and reason had little exercise, it must not be forgotten, that, through imagination and sensibility awakened by material objects, these worshippers might rise into the regions of the sublime and infinite, the eternal and divine. Such religion existed in the reign of Charles I. amongst the dignitaries of the Church. Occupying prebendal houses in a Cathedral close, they found nourishment for their devotion in "the service of song," as they occupied the dark oak stalls of the Minster choir. It was also cherished in the Universities. Heads of houses, professors, and fellows carried much of the Anglican feeling with them, as they crossed the green quadrangle, to morning and evening prayer. Town rectors and rural incumbents would participate in the same influence. Devout women, in oriel-windowed closets, also would kneel down, under its inspiration, to repeat passages in the Prayer book, or in Bishop Andrewes' devotions. And some English noblemen, free from courtly vice, would embody the nobler principles of the system. Yet, probably, the larger number of religious people in England were of a different class. The following extract from a letter, belonging to the early part of the year 1641, giving an account of the death of the Lady Barbara Viscountess Fielding, affords an idea of Anglican piety in the last hour of life, more vivid than any general description:--