THE Duchess of Trent would never call the little chamber which she used for her devotions an oratory, thinking that term savoured of Romanism. The furniture of the praying-closet was as downright and old-fashioned as its name. There was a little table against the wall, supporting a plain cross of silver, a Bible, a Book of Common Prayer, a small book of devotions called Bogatzky’s “Golden Treasury,” containing portions of Scripture, with hymns and prayers for each day. An armchair and a kneeling-cushion were the only other articles in the closet, except on the walls, which were hung with a few illuminated texts of Scripture, and a fine engraving of one of Holman Hunt’s pictures. It was such a room as might have been used by the pious Countess of Huntingdon, or one of those saintly dames who kept alive the lamp of Evangelical Christianity through the days of the Regency. Here the Duchess was accustomed to spend many hours in pious meditation. Her nature was inclined to the tenets of the Quakers, but, like the royal mistress whom she had formerly served, she deemed that questions of ecclesiastical forms and government were unimportant, provided they did not come between the soul and its Maker. Her horror of Romanism had its root in the natural strength of her character; she revolted from the devotional practices of that communion as a healthy man might revolt from the use of crutches. Her education had taught her to consider that the claims of the Roman Church were a deliberate imposture, but she was too charitable to think evil of the individual members of its priesthood. The great wave of medieval reaction which was now sweeping over the English Church, and in a lesser degree over the Nonconformist bodies, had passed her by. The ecclesiastical subtleties which had exercised the mind of Newman and his followers were meaningless to her. She lived, as she humbly believed, in direct communion with God, whose Holy Spirit afforded her what light was necessary to salvation, and the Sacraments she regarded as mere outward tokens of a spiritual allegiance.