Sometimes the old-fashioned worshippers get put into the front row, and there, without prayer-stool or chair-back against which to steady themselves, find kneeling an impossibility; so they either sit with their elbows on their knees, or betray associations with square pews and comfortable corners at home, by turning their backs to the altar, and burying their faces in their rush-bottomed seats. The Ritualist would have knelt as straight as an arrow and without quivering once all through. People are generally supposed to go to church for devotion, but, if they do, devotion and vanity are twin sisters. Look at the number of pretty hands which find it absolutely necessary to take off their gloves, and which are always wandering up to the face in becoming gestures and with the right curve. Or, if the hands are only mediocre, the rings are handsome; and diamonds sparkle as well in a church as anywhere else. And though one vows to renounce the lusts of the world as well as of the flesh, there is no use in having diamonds if one's neighbours don't see them. Look too, at the pretty faces which know so well the effect produced by a little paint and powder beneath a softening mask of thin white lace. Is this their best confession of sin? And again, those elaborate toilets in which women come to pray for forgiveness and humility; are they for the honour of God? It strikes us that the honour of God has very little to do with that formidable, and may be unpaid, milliner's bill, but the admiration of men and the envy of other women a great deal. The Pope is wise to make all ladies go to his religious festivals without bonnets and in rigid black. It narrows the margin of coquetry somewhat, if it does not altogether remove it. But dress ever was, and ever will be, as webs spread in the way of woman's righteousness; and we have no doubt that Eve frilled her apron of fig-leaves before she had worn it a day.