Sprout, he changed and reversed all his habits, good, bad, and indifferent. From staking thousands at a horse-race, he turned up his eyes at the grievous abomination of half-crown whist; and, indeed, had he been disposed to card-playing, he could not have indulged himself at Trimmerstone, for Mr. Sprout had banished almost all card-playing from the place, so that there was not a pack of cards in the parish, except two or three mutilated well-thumbed packs of quadrille-cards, which were still used by a knot of antiquated spinsters worthy of the good old days of Sacheverel and High Church. Quadrille-cards will not do for whist, for all the eights, nines and tens are thrown out. Formerly, Lord Trimmerstone used to be proud of giving some of his acquaintance a sumptuous dinner; but now he had changed all that, and he only kept one female cook, who could just manage to make a comfortable and snug little dish or two for his lordship’s own self, occasionally assisted by the Rev. Mr. Sprout. Formerly, his lordship had been disposed to be lively, and oftentimes facetious; but now he was prodigiously grave, and almost sulky. Formerly, his lordship never went to church; now he went twice every Sunday, and said Amen as loud as the clerk, and with much more solemnity, for the clerk did not turn up his eyes for fear of losing the place. Formerly, his lordship had been very candid; now he had become exceedingly censorious, and he seemed to measure his religion by the severity with which he reproved transgressors. His lordship several times attempted to make all the inhabitants of Trimmerstone go to church twice every Sunday, except his own cook. But in this his lordship could not succeed, and indeed it was well for him that he could not; for if he had, the church would have been so crowded that he could not have enjoyed a great, large, lined, stuffed, padded, carpeted pew for himself. Though Lord Trimmerstone was a zealous convert to Mr. Sprout’s theory of the national religion, yet that theory was not quite obvious and distinct to his lordship’s apprehension; and often did he blunder in the enunciation of his theory, and awkwardly did he sometimes express himself when he thought he was contending for the truth: for he has been known to rebuke the unepiscopal worshippers in barns and outhouses for holding the pestilential doctrines of election and predestination. This was pardonable in a young beginner; but Mr. Sprout set him right, and showed that the doctrines of predestination and election had been sometimes erroneously apprehended to mean predestination and election, whereas the proper view of the subject was that they meant election and predestination.