’"We make prayer a part of us, praying for no gifts, no interventions; through the faith in prayer opening the soul to the undiscerned.  And take this, my Beauchamp, for the good in prayer, that it makes us repose on the unknown with confidence, makes us flexible to change, makes us ready for revolution—­for life, then!  He who has the fountain of prayer in him will not complain of hazards.  Prayer is the recognition of laws; the soul’s exercise and source of strength; its thread of conjunction with them.  Prayer for an object is the cajolery of an idol; the resource of superstition.  There you misread it, Beauchamp.  We that fight the living world must have the universal for succour of the truth in it.  Cast forth the soul in prayer, you meet the effluence of the outer truth, you join with the creative elements giving breath to you; and that crust of habit which is the soul’s tomb; and custom, the soul’s tyrant; and pride, our volcano-peak that sinks us in a crater; and fear, which plucks the feathers from the wings of the soul and sits it naked and shivering in a vault, where the passing of a common hodman’s foot above sounds like the king of terrors coming,—­you are free of them, you live in the day and for the future, by this exercise and discipline of the soul’s faith.  Me it keeps young everlastingly, like the fountain of . . ."’

‘I say I cannot sit and hear any more of it!’ exclaimed the colonel, chafing out of patience.

Lord Palmet said to Miss Halkett:  ’Isn’t it like what we used to remember of a sermon?’

Cecilia waited for her father to break away, but Captain Baskelett had undertaken to skip, and was murmuring in sing-song some of the phrases that warned him off: 

’"History—­Bible of Humanity; . . .  Permanency—­enthusiast’s dream—­despot’s aim—­clutch of dead men’s fingers in live flesh . . .  Man animal; man angel; man rooted; man winged”:  . . .  Really, all this is too bad.  Ah! here we are:  “At them with outspeaking, Beauchamp!” Here we are, colonel, and you will tell me whether you think it treasonable or not.  “At them,” et caetera:  “We have signed no convention to respect their”—­he speaks of Englishmen, Colonel Halkett—­“their passive idolatries; a people with whom a mute conformity is as good as worship, but a word of dissent holds you up to execration; and only for the freedom won in foregone days their hate would be active.  As we have them in their present stage,”—­old Nevil’s mark—­“We are not parties to the tacit agreement to fill our mouths and shut our eyes.  We speak because it is better they be roused to lapidate us than soused in their sty, with none to let them hear they live like swine, craving only not to be disturbed at the trough.  The religion of this vast English middle-class ruling the land is Comfort.  It is their central thought; their idea of necessity; their sole aim.  Whatsoever ministers to Comfort, seems to belong to it, pretends to support it, they yield their passive worship to.