Fifty years ago and more, when I was at Longford Castle with my two companions, who are no more with us, we found there a pleasant, motherly old housekeeper, or attendant of some kind, who gave us a draught of home-made ale and left a cheerful remembrance with us, as, I need hardly say, we did with her, in a materialized expression of our good-will.  It always rubbed very hard on my feelings to offer money to any persons who had served me well, as if they were doing it for their own pleasure.  It may have been the granddaughter of the kindly old matron of the year 1833 who showed us round, and possibly, if I had sunk a shaft of inquiry, I might have struck a well of sentiment.  But

  “Take, O boatman, thrice thy fee,”

carried into practical life, is certain in its financial result to the subject of the emotional impulse, but is less sure to call forth a tender feeling in the recipient.  One will hardly find it worth while to go through the world weeping over his old recollections, and paying gold instead of silver and silver instead of copper to astonished boatmen and bewildered chambermaids.

On Sunday, the 18th of July, we attended morning service at the cathedral.  The congregation was not proportioned to the size of the great edifice.  These vast places of worship were built for ages when faith was the rule and questioning the exception.  I will not say that faith has grown cold, but it has cooled from white heat to cherry red or a still less flaming color.  As to church attendance, I have heard the saying attributed to a great statesman, that “once a day is Orthodox, but twice a day is Puritan.”  No doubt many of the same class of people that used to fill the churches stay at home and read about evolution or telepathy, or whatever new gospel they may have got hold of.  Still the English seem to me a religious people; they have leisure enough to say grace and give thanks before and after meals, and their institutions tend to keep alive the feelings of reverence which cannot be said to be distinctive of our own people.

In coming out of the cathedral, on the Sunday I just mentioned, a gentleman addressed me as a fellow-countryman.  There is something,—­I will not stop now to try and define it,—­but there is something by which we recognize an American among the English before he speaks and betrays his origin.  Our new friend proved to be the president of one of our American colleges; an intelligent and well-instructed gentleman, of course.  By the invitation of our host he came in to visit us in the evening, and made himself very welcome by his agreeable conversation.