The combination thus flippantly stated is a conspicuous sign of the present times. The decay of religion and the increase of superstition are among the most noteworthy of the social changes which I have seen. When I speak of the decay of religion, of course I must be understood to refer only to external observances. As to interior convictions, I have neither the will nor the power to investigate them. I deal only with the habits of religious practice, and in this respect the contrast between Then and Now is marked indeed. In the first place, grace was then said before and after dinner. I do not know that the ceremony was very edifying, but it was traditional and respectable. Bishop Wilberforce, in his diary, tells of a greedy clergyman who, when asked to say grace at a dinner-party, used to vary the form according to the character of the wine-glasses which he saw before him on the table. If they were champagne-glasses, he used to begin the benediction with "Bountiful Jehovah"; but, if they were only claret-glasses, he said, "We are not worthy of the least of Thy mercies." Charles Kingsley, who generally drew his social portraits from actual life, described the impressive eloquence of the Rev. Mr. O'Blareaway, who inaugurated an exceptionally good dinner by praying "that the daily bread of our less-favoured brethren might be mercifully vouchsafed to them." There was a well-remembered squire in Hertfordshire whose love of his dinner was constantly at war with his pietistic traditions. He always had his glass of sherry poured out before he sat down to dinner, so that he might get it without a moment's delay. One night, in his generous eagerness, he upset the glass just as he dropped into his seat at the end of grace, and the formula ran on to an unexpected conclusion, thus: "For what we are going to receive the Lord make us truly thankful--D---- n!" But, if the incongruities which attended grace before dinner were disturbing, still more so were the solemnities of the close. Grace after dinner always happened at the moment of loudest and most general conversation. For an hour and a half people had been stuffing as if their lives depended on it--"one feeding like forty." After a good deal of sherry, the champagne had made its tardy appearance, had performed its welcome rounds, and had in turn been succeeded by port and home-brewed beer. Out of the abundance of the mouth the heart speaketh, and every one was talking at once, and very loud. Perhaps the venue was laid in a fox-hunting country, and then the air was full of such voices as these: "Were you out with the squire to-day?" "Any sport?" "Yes, we'd rather a nice gallop." "Plenty of the animal about, I hope?" "Well, I don't know. I believe that new keeper at Boreham Wood is a vulpicide. I don't half like his looks." "What an infernal villain! A man who would shoot a fox would poison his own grandmother." "Sh! Sh!" "What's the matter?" "_For what we have received_," &c.