Puritan houses exhibited Scripture texts upon the doors and over the fire-places; also upon the baby's cot, and even upon a wooden skillet or a copper kettle. Godly verses hung on the walls, forming decorations destitute of all beauty, save such as might exist in the meaning of the words printed in rude type and upon coarse paper. The ladies, in fair white stomachers and silken skirts, plied their needles or read their books. A few conned the Greek Testament or spelt out the Hebrew Bible. Lips and the lute yielded fair music; but in some cases a large induction from the study of natural history seems to have been considered necessary to vindicate the recreation, for it was sagely observed: "Of all beasts, saith Ælian, there is not that delighteth not in harmony only the ass; strange would it be for man to love it not." It ought in this connection, however, to be remembered that the songs of the seventeenth century were not generally of a kind to commend themselves to minds distinguished by purity; and therefore, amongst religious and virtuous persons, a prejudice extensively obtained against all music except such as was sacred. [Sidenote: _Domestic Religion._] V. Family worship was maintained with conscientious regularity, but was sometimes carried to a most wearisome length. In earlier days, Presbyterians had been cautious in their prolonged devotions, lest they should be interrupted by their neighbours, and had even adopted the very strange expedient of posting a boy by the gate, to sing and shout, for the purpose of deadening the voice of the individual who might be engaged in domestic supplication. When alarming events occurred, persons of this description would spend whole nights in the exercises of devotion; and Oliver Heywood, referring to one of these seasons, remarks: "Such a night of prayers, tears, and groans, I was never present at in all my life."[407] Whilst in the days of the Civil Wars and the Protectorate the Puritans had full liberty of worship, their Episcopalian neighbours were obliged to take the place of those whom they had previously persecuted; and the reader of "Woodstock" will, perhaps, call to mind Sir Henry Lee, in his wicker chair, listening to an old man, in a dilapidated clerical habit, reading prayers, as Alice knelt at her father's feet, uttering "responses with a voice that might have suited a choir of angels." The picture is no doubt over-coloured, and may express a deceptive kind of sentimentalism; yet the circumstances of domestic worship in the dwelling of a High Church family would not be unlike the graphic sketch supplied by the great novelist.