‘Upon my word,’ she said, in a deliberate high voice, as if she were dictating to an amanuensis, ’it is a most admirable selection of works for popular reading, this that our excellent Mr. Tryan has made.  I do not know whether, if the task had been confided to me, I could have made a selection, combining in a higher degree religious instruction and edification with a due admixture of the purer species of amusement.  This story of ‘Father Clement’ is a library in itself on the errors of Romanism.  I have ever considered fiction a suitable form for conveying moral and religious instruction, as I have shown in my little work ’De Courcy,’ which, as a very clever writer in the Crompton ‘Argus’ said at the time of its appearance, is the light vehicle of a weighty moral.’

’One ‘ud think,’ said Mrs. Linnet, who also had her spectacles on, but chiefly for the purpose of seeing what the others were doing, ’there didn’t want much to drive people away from a religion as makes ’em walk barefoot over stone floors, like that girl in Father Clement—­sending the blood up to the head frightful.  Anybody might see that was an unnat’ral creed.’

‘Yes,’ said Miss Pratt, ’but asceticism is not the root of the error, as Mr. Tryan was telling us the other evening—­it is the denial of the great doctrine of justification by faith.  Much as I had reflected on all subjects in the course of my life, I am indebted to Mr. Tryan for opening my eyes to the full importance of that cardinal doctrine of the Reformation.  From a child I had a deep sense of religion, but in my early days the Gospel light was obscured in the English Church, notwithstanding the possession of our incomparable Liturgy, than which I know no human composition more faultless and sublime.  As I tell Eliza I was not blest as she is at the age of two-and-twenty, in knowing a clergyman who unites all that is great and admirable in intellect with the highest spiritual gifts.  I am no contemptible judge of a man’s acquirements, and I assure you I have tested Mr. Tryan’s by questions which are a pretty severe touchstone.  It is true, I sometimes carry him a little beyond the depth of the other listeners.  Profound learning,’ continued Miss Pratt, shutting her spectacles, and tapping them on the book before her, ’has not many to estimate it in Milby.’

‘Miss Pratt,’ said Rebecca, ’will you please give me Scott’s “Force of Truth?” There—­that small book lying against the “Life of Legh Richmond."’

‘That’s a book I’m very fond of—­the “Life of Legh Richmond,"’ said Mrs. Linnet.  ’He found out all about that woman at Tutbury as pretended to live without eating.  Stuff and nonsense!’