Four or five carriages had to set down before that containing the Earl of Dreddlington, Lady Cecilia, and Mr. Titmouse, could draw up; by which time there had accumulated as many in its rear, so eager were the pious aristocrats to get into this _holy retreat_. As Titmouse, holding his hat and cane in one hand, while with the other he arranged his hair, strutted up the centre aisle, following the earl and Lady Cecilia, he could hardly repress the exultation with which he thought of a former visit of his to that very fabric some two years before. _Then_, on attempting to enter the body of the chapel, the vergers had politely but firmly repulsed him; on which, swelling with vexation, he had ascended to the gallery, where, after having been kept standing for ten minutes at least, he had been beckoned by the pew-opener towards, and squeezed into, the furthermost pew, close at the back of the organ, and in which said pew were two powdered footman. If disgusted with his mere contiguity, guess what must have been his feelings when his nearest companion good-naturedly forced upon him a part of his prayer-book; which Titmouse, ready to spit in his face, held with his finger and thumb, as though it had been the tail of a snake! _Now_, how changed was all! He had become an aristocrat; in his veins ran some of the richest and oldest blood in the country; his brow might ere long be graced by the coronet which King Henry II. had placed upon the brow of the founder of his family, some seven hundred years before; and a tall footman, with powdered head, glistening silver shoulder-knot, and sky-blue livery, and carrying in a bag the gilded implements of devotion, was humbly following behind him! What a remarkable and vivid contrast between his present and his former circumstances, was present at that moment to his reflecting mind! As he stood, his hat covering his face, in an attitude of devotion--"I wonder," thought he, "what all these nobs and swells would say, if they knew the sort of figure I had cut here on the last time?" and again--"'Pon my life, what would I give for--say Huckaback--to see me just now!" What an elegant and fashionable air the congregation wore! Surely there _must_ be something in religion, when people such as were around him came so punctually to church, and behaved so seriously! The members of that congregation were, indeed, exemplary in their strict discharge of their public religious duties! Scarce one of them was there who had not been at the opera till twelve o'clock over-night; the dulcet notes of the singers were still thrilling in their ears, the graceful attitudes of the dancers still present to their eyes. Every previous night of the week had they been engaged in the brilliant ball-room, and whirled in the mazes of the voluptuous waltz, or glittering in the picturesque splendor of fancy dress, till three, four, and five o'clock in the morning: yet here they were in the house