The change in Bingley's life was as great and sudden as that which the Anatomist of Melancholy has here described; but it led to no bodily disease nor to any tangible malady. His property was worth about fourteen hundred a year. He kept no servant, and no company; and he lived upon water-gruel and celery, except at harvest time, when he regaled himself with sparrow pies, made of the young birds just fledged, for which he paid the poor inhabitants who caught them two pence a head. Probably he supposed that it was rendering the neighbourhood a service thus to rid it of what he considered both a nuisance and a delicacy. This was his only luxury; and his only business was to collect about a dozen boys and girls on Sundays, and hear them say their Catechism, and read a chapter in the New Testament, for which they received remuneration in the intelligible form of two pence each, but at the feasts and statutes, “most sweet guerdon, better than remuneration,” in the shape of sixpence. He stood godfather for several poor people's children, they were baptized by his surname; when they were of proper age he used to put them out as apprentices, and in his will he left each of them an hundred guineas to be paid when they reached the age of twenty-five if they were married, but not till they married; and if they reached the age of fifty without marrying, the legacy was then forfeited. There were two children for whom he stood godfather, but whose parents did not chuse that they should be named after him; he never took any notice of these children, nor did he bequeath them any thing; but to one of the others he left the greater part of his property. This man used every week day to lock himself in the church and pace the aisles for two hours, from ten till twelve o'clock. An author who in his own peculiar and admirable way, is one of the most affecting writers of any age or country, has described with characteristic feeling the different effects produced upon certain minds by entering an empty or a crowded church. “In the latter,” he says, “it is chance but some present human frailty,—an act of inattention on the part of some of the auditory,—or a trait of affectation, or worse vain-glory on that of the preacher,—puts us by our best thoughts, disharmonizing the place and the occasion. But wouldst thou know the beauty of holiness?—go alone on some week day, borrowing the keys of good master Sexton; traverse the cool aisles of some country church; think of the piety that has kneeled there,—-the congregations old and young that have found consolation there,—the meek pastor,—the docile parishioners,—with no disturbing emotions, no cross conflicting comparisons, drink in the tranquillity of the place, till thou thyself become as fixed and motionless as the marble effigies that kneel and weep around thee!”[1] [Footnote 1: The Last Essays of Elia.]