"Now observe, Miss Torrington, that what you have been pleased to call levity and poetry, I, in my clerical capacity, denounce as indecent and obscene." "Is that your reason for setting me to play it?" said Rosalind in a tone of anger. "That question again, does not, I fear, argue an amiable and pious state of mind," replied Mr. Cartwright, appealing meekly with his eyes to the right and left. "It is to substitute other thoughts for those which the air has hitherto suggested that I conceive the singing this song, as it now stands, desirable." "Might it not be as well to leave the air alone altogether?" said Rosalind. "Decidedly not," replied the vicar. "The notes, as you have allowed, are already familiar to all men, and it is therefore a duty to endeavour to make that familiarity familiarly suggest thoughts of heaven." "Thoughts of heaven," said Rosalind, "should never be suggested familiarly." "Dreadful--very dreadful doctrine that, Miss Torrington! and I must tell you, in devout assurance of the truth I speak, that it is in order to combat and overthrow such notions as you now express, that Heaven hath vouchsafed, by an act of special providence, to send upon earth in these later days my humble self, and some others who think like me." "And permit me, sir, in the name of the earthly father I have lost," replied Rosalind, while her eyes _almost_ overflowed with the glistening moisture her earnestness brought into them,--"permit me in his reverenced name to say, that constant prayer can in no way be identified with familiarity of address; and that of many lamentable evils which the class of preachers to whom you allude have brought upon blundering Christians, that of teaching them to believe that there is righteousness in mixing the awful and majestic name of God with all the hourly, petty occurrences of this mortal life, is one of the most deplorable." "May your unthinking youth, my dear young lady, plead before the God of mercy in mitigation of the wrath which such sentiments are calculated to draw down!" "Oh!" sobbed Miss Richards. "Alas!" sighed Mrs. Simpson. "How can you, Rosalind, speak so to the pastor and master of our souls?" said Fanny, while tears of sympathy for the outraged vicar fell from her beautiful eyes.