duty being worship, whereas they have been fully alive to the duties they owe to their pigs and their poultry. The whole conception of worship was killed by Puritanism. That, and so-called Evangelicalism, insisted on the duty of listening to pious orations as essential to salvation. But this is not worship. In place of the sermon calling to worship God, it was made a substitute for it, much as during the great European War, the Germans had to consume an Ersatzbrot, composed of sawdust.
At no time in the history of England have manners and modes of life, and moulding of ideas, changed so rapidly as in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is conceivable that a century hence a collection of pictures of life as it was, and religious thought as it shaped itself in this period of transition, may be of interest. We seem to be looking at an exhibition of dissolving views, and entertain a desire to register the impressions left on the mind by each scene before it is replaced by another.
When I was a boy, it took one a day to travel in the mail-coach from home to Exeter, and now in the same time, nay, in less, one can reach London by rail, and possibly soon, in half that time, by aeroplane.
When I was a boy, a waggon was sent up annually to Exeter, thirty-three miles distant, to bring down the groceries needed for the year; and now the grocer's motor-bus brings supplies weekly to one's door.
When I was a boy, as I have already told, one could not ride or drive a few miles without being pulled up at a turnpike, and now not a toll-gate remains in England.
When I was a boy, one frequently wore, especially when riding, white trousers and straps ; now no one ever appears in "ducks," and no one ever strains his nether garments with straps under the boots. I can recall when thus habited, and with a short jacket, I gallantly offered to take the village surgeon's daughter en croupe across the river, as there was no bridge. Her fright when half-way over so alarmed the steed that he dashed forward, and she foolishly caught my arms above the elbows to steady herself, in place of clinging to my waist. The result was, in the first place, that I lost hold of the reins; in the second place,
