'Blessings on you, I could stand here for your return, could I but see you all the way you go.' 'That you will do better, Allen, from your lodge-window, therefore go in.' 'A happy old man is that,' said Latimer to Ellen as they rode away from the old gothic-carved and massive gates, and turned their horses' heads to the shore. The praises of the poor are not always to be had for money. The master may bestow all his gifts to feed them, and yet not be charitable towards them. To bestow injudiciously, or indiscriminately, however bountiful the gift, will often create desires, and jealousies, which will not admit of thankfulness.' 'I agree with you; on this very ground has my father acted in all his distributions of charity. Long service and fidelity he rewards. Industry, honesty, and cleanliness, he upholds. Laziness he would suffer to starve before he would supply food for its discontent; and I can tell you, moreover, that not one single donation would he bestow upon any of the mendicant order, now travelling the country under the garb of holy vows. No, not though they repeat the "Pater Noster," "Ave Maria," or show their bare feet blistered with their self-devoted journeying.' 'I sigh to see talents prostrated to beggary and superstition as they are in our day. Religion, Ellen, is become a superstitious torment, rather than a holy comfort. Men seem to me to be under a curse rather than a blessing, and to walk trembling from fear of different fraternities, more than in the love of God. Oh! Ellen, when I see, as, alas! I too often do, men and women entering the dark cells of our monastic institutions, and with bare feet walking along the dark aisles and cloisters, and bowing at the tomb of corruption, themselves overcome by the sombre shades of the cold, silent, superstitious places in which they move, I often think how poor must be their conceptions of the God of light, if they can confine their notions of Him to the cloister!' 'But God is love, Ellen, and this love is manifested in his Son, whom He gave to death for the salvation of our souls. If men did but love one another for this great salvation, O, Ellen, we should see but little of those terrors and abuses which now threaten the world.'