A great change has taken place in this respect with persons of all shades of religious opinions.  With an increased attention to the externals of religion, we believe that in many points the heart has been more exercised also.  Take, as an example, the practice of family prayer.  Many excellent and pious households of the former generation would not venture upon the observance, I am afraid, because they were in dread of the sneer.  There was a foolish application of the terms “Methodist” “saints,” “over-righteous,” where the practice was observed.  It was to take up a rather decided position in the neighbourhood; and I can testify, that less than fifty years ago a family would have been marked and talked of for a usage of which now throughout the country the exception is rather the unusual circumstance.  A little anecdote from recollections in my own family will furnish a good illustration of a state of feeling on this point now happily unknown.  In a northern town of the east coast, where the earliest recollections of my life go back, there was usually a detachment of a regiment, who were kindly received and welcomed to the society, which in the winter months was very full and very gay.  There was the usual measure of dining, dancing, supping, card-playing, and gossiping, which prevailed in country towns at the time.  The officers were of course an object of much interest to the natives, and their habits were much discussed.  A friend was staying in the family who partook a good deal of the Athenian temperament—­viz. delight in hearing and telling some new thing.  On one occasion she burst forth in great excitement with the intelligence that “Sir Nathaniel Duckinfield, the officer in command of the detachment, had family prayers every morning!” A very near and dear relative of mine, knowing the tendency of the lady to gossip, pulled her up with the exclamation:  “How can you repeat such things, Miss Ogilvy? nothing in the world but the ill-natured stories of Montrose!” The remark was made quite innocently, and unconsciously of the bitter satire it conveyed upon the feeling of the place.  The “ill-nature” of these stories was true enough, because ill-nature was the motive of those who raised them; not because it is an ill-natured thing of itself to say of a family that they have household worship, but the ill-nature consisted in their intending to throw out a sneer and a sarcasm upon a subject where all such reflections are unbecoming and indecorous.  It is one of the best proofs of change of habits and associations on this matter, that the anecdote, exquisite as it is for our purpose, will hardly be understood by many of our young friends, or, at least, happily has lost much of its force and pungency.