With affected ease and cheerfulness he conversed with Signora Rivolta; and with an almost ridiculous affectation of indifference, he took comparatively little notice of Clara. The conversation between Markham and Signora Rivolta was unusually animated. Matters of taste were discussed, politics touched upon, and theology alluded to. The last was an exceedingly delicate topic. Markham, with all his simplicity and ignorance of what is called the world, had not been inattentive to theology. He had observed and thought much of the influence of religion upon the human mind; this, indeed, had been his first and almost his only speculation. He had been very desirous, even from early youth, of acting and living most accurately and conscientiously. He was as ignorant on the subject of sectarianism as any member of an establishment need wish to be. But sectarianism does not spring from the attractions of heresy so much as from the dissatisfactions of orthodoxy. For so long as the dogmas of our own creed please us, the arguments of another, however ingenious, do not disturb us. Unfortunately, however, for Markham’s orthodoxy, his native town labored under the evil of a schism in the church, which is far more injurious to its stability than a schism from it. The evangelical party was very strong and very numerous, and very noisy; and made a great talk about religion, and paid very great attention to church duties and observances. Markham was a man generally speaking much in earnest, and he therefore gave much attention to this modification of the established theology; and had, when a very young man, contrary to the opinion and advice of his father and mother, sided with this party; and he thought the other party little better than mere indifferentists. He thought he saw among the evangelical party symptoms of the original and primitive spirit of Christianity; and he used to say so very freely, and to think so very seriously. And his mother used to say, he would know better as he grew older: and in process of time he did grow older; and whether he thought better or not we presume not to say; but we do know, that as he grew older, he acquired a habit of analysing motives and looking into principles. And it came to pass that he found among these evangelicals divers manifestations of a worldly spirit, which did not exactly coincide with his notions of extraordinary spiritual purity. In the mercantile part of that class he saw much that bordered very closely on trickery; in the class a little higher, he found a mighty spirit of conceit and priggishness. Towards their neighbours he saw that many of them were mightily censorious. In conversing with some of them, and those the ringleaders, he found that they were prodigiously ignorant of the very principles on which their peculiarities were founded, and he found them to be unanimous only on one point; namely, that their favorite clergyman was a _nice man_.