But they are gone; and now, if you wish to learn self-denial and take up the cross, you must renounce Christianity. Its sleek and popular minister can tell you little either of one or the other. Religion now dresses in silk and satin, goes to court, has all Belgravia hallooing at her heels. Her ways indeed are ways of pleasantness, and her paths, paths of peace. Dr. Watts was right— ‘Religion never was design’d, To make our pleasure less.’ Take, for instance, the honourable and reverend rector of St. George’s, Bloomsbury. As the brother of a Lord, Mr. Villiers has great claims on a British public; as a canon of St. Paul’s, the rector of a well-filled church, still greater. Bloomsbury Square is not exactly high life, but it is respectable. The better sort of professional men and merchants abound in it. Its neighbourhood is a step in a genteel direction. It is not part and parcel of that vulgar place, the City. It is on the way to the West-end. One might live in a worse place. Its natives are civilised, eschew steel forks, and affect silver spoons. Most of them speak English, and a few have carriages of their own. The place has seen better days; but it is not altogether of the past. It abounds with the latest fashions. It can talk of the last new novel. Even its religion smacks of the genteel—carries a morocco prayer-book, with silver clasps, is followed by a page with buttons of shining hue, and has its services performed by men of honourable and exalted name. Many in the Church have been born in low stations—have risen up to high rank, nevertheless. Still it is a merit to be of aristocratic descent, and even in the Church that fact is as patent as in the world. It is only in Turkey that birth carries no weight—but then the Turk is but little better than one of the wicked.