Lady Woodstock and her daughters were very religious, according to the present fashion. They were not religious purely for fashion's sake, but merely according to the fashion. They certainly believed themselves to be religious, and so far they certainly were. One of the first thoughts that entered their minds on arriving in town was to engage a pew at church. Lady Woodstock herself would have been as religious, let the fashion be as it might; but we believe that the young ladies admired the popular preacher as much for his popularity as for his piety. There was to the west of Temple Bar, but how far to the west and in what street our informant has not been careful enough to inform us, a very handsome chapel of ease, answering by its comfortable internal accommodations most completely to its name; at which chapel there officiated a preacher whose discourses were as soft and beautiful as the velvet cushion on which his elbows reclined, and light as the feathers wherewith that cushion was stuffed. Lady Woodstock was so far religious as to regard the church-prayers as a matter of devotion, but the young ladies rather considered the sermon as a matter of diversion. They were most skilful sermon critics, very loudly praising zeal and seriousness, and very acute in detecting grammatical errors. It was very amusing to hear the young ladies on Sunday morning tumultuously and in concert gabbling forth the praises or dispraises of the sermon of the day, and criticising the air, tone, aspect and manner of the reverend officiating divine. "What a delightful sermon we have had this morning."—"Did you notice how solemnly he gave out the text?"—"I like to hear the words of Scripture uttered solemnly and seriously."—"But did not you very much admire that beautiful simile of the gilded bark and the rippling wavelets, there is something so very pretty in the word wavelets?"—"Yes, it is a very pretty word, but I do not think it is in Johnson."—"I should like to read that sermon, it was so accurately composed; I am sure it would read well." Such talk as this, but extended to a length which it would be tedious to narrate, established for the young ladies in their own thoughts and in the thoughts of their neighbours that they were very religious. So pleased and well satisfied were they with that kind of discourse, that they were not unfrequently led to think very lightly of the religion of such as could not or would not join them in the discussion. Old Mr. Martindale would sometimes in his peculiar way laugh at the zeal of the young ladies in discussing these matters, and they had long ago very deliberately set him down as a man of no religion. With all this, however, they were very good and amiable young women. They were benevolent,—they were affectionate—they were diligent—they were cheerful—they were decidedly decorous in their conduct and manners; and their whole character was truly respectable. They were rather confined in their notions, but that was the accident of education; and Mr. Martindale thought that they would be better companions for his grand-daughter than many others with whom an acquaintance might have been formed, and who were more extensively acquainted with that sort of stuff which people call the world.
CHAPTER V.
"A heated fancy or imagination
May be mistaken for an inspiration."
Byrom.
With such tastes and views as the daughters of Lady Woodstock possessed, it is not to be supposed that they should be long in town without forming an acquaintance with the charming preacher, whose melodious voice and pious similies so regularly delighted and edified them every Sunday. And let no critic carp at this phraseology. To be delighted is to be put in good humor; to be put in good humor is to have the best feelings of our souls called into action. There is to some ears devotional impulse and excitement to holy feeling in the wordless eloquence of a well-played voluntary; and why should not a well-turned period from the lips of a graceful speaker have power to edify as well as to please? There was not any impropriety in Lady Woodstock's taking notice of the preacher of whom we are speaking. He was a middle-aged married man with a numerous family, for whom he was endeavouring to provide as well as might be. His preferment was but little, though his popularity was great. He was unfortunate in having too many patrons. Every body thought that, as Mr. Henderson had a very fashionable audience, he must of necessity be in the way of preferment; and so he certainly was, as the one mile stone is on the road to Windsor a very little way on, and not likely to get any farther.
Now old John Martindale had his crotchets, as our readers may have perceived; and one of his crotchets was, that with all his natural obstinacy, if he ever took a fancy to an individual for one quality which pleased him, he kindly gave that individual credit for every possible human excellence, and would suffer himself to be led, guided, or drawn, ad libitum, by the said individual. He was pleased with Lady Woodstock as being a woman of good natural sense, quiet, unobtrusive, unaffected manners; and he was also pleased with the young ladies her daughters, because they differed much from the majority of young ladies of the present age. Thereupon, whatever Lady Woodstock said was right; and the daughters also had their influence over the old gentleman. Had any one else attempted to persuade Mr. Martindale to attend service at Mr. Henderson's chapel, he would have uttered such an outrageous and violent philippic against popular preachers, as would have shocked and terrified all lovers of velvet cushions. But the young ladies ruled their mamma, and Mr. Martindale thought that there must be some good sense in a preacher whom so intelligent a woman as Lady Woodstock could tolerate. He therefore was prevailed on to attend occasionally at this fashionable chapel; and a very nice, warm, snug, comfortable place it was. Yet, though Mr. Martindale was induced to give his occasional attendance, he could not help so far yielding to his natural propensity as to criticise somewhat cynically and severely the performances and exhibitions of the preacher. When, indeed, preachers condescend to lose sight of the dignity of their profession, and to set themselves up as orators and flower-mongers to attract the gaping gaze of a rabble of Sunday loungers, they must not feel mortified if their performances undergo the same kind of criticism, and produce no more than the same effect as the performances of singers, dancers, fiddlers, conjurors, or any others who exhibit themselves for the amusement of the public.
By more frequent attendance the old gentleman grew less fastidious, and he fancied that he could discern, amidst all the flowery and pretty eloquence of the popular preacher, some symptoms of strong good sense; and he more than suspected that the style was assumed for the sake of rendering that tolerable which otherwise would not be attended to. Pleased with his imagined discovery, he was desirous of being acquainted with Mr. Henderson, and very readily acceded to Lady Woodstock's request to meet him at her house. Judging from his own impression of Mr. Henderson's strength of mind and fulness of information, he thought it not unlikely that he should find in him a fit and proper person to induce Signora Rivolta to look more favorably on the English religion. But the old gentleman was not aware that it is possible for a man to be a popular preacher, and to utter very elegant harangues, and even to display in his composition a sound judgment as well as an elegant taste, but at the same time to be grievously unfurnished with stores of literature, and altogether unexercised in the harsher struggles and conflicts of polemic disputation. This he found to be the case with Mr. Henderson. The worthy preacher was a man of good sense, graceful and agreeable manners, fluent in conversation, well acquainted with all the popular and fashionable topics of conversation, and quite as well satisfied as Mr. Martindale himself of the folly and vanity of the passions and pursuits of the day. One of the two thought that he could not do better than set himself cynically against the world—the other humored its follies; the one did no good by his cynical humor—the other did a little by his management and direction of the prevalent follies. Mr. Henderson, we are inclined to think, judged the wisest of the two. It is not in the power of a weak hand to stop a headstrong horse; but less power than is required to stop the animal, may direct its course. Thus thought the popular preacher. He was as aware as Mr. Martindale that fashion was folly where folly was fashion. He knew that the springs and motives of action must be of a mingled nature: he knew that action was different from contemplation. The latter was pure virtue and reason; the former mingled with passion and folly. From vanity the preacher often extorted liberality. From the pride, the superstition, the caprice, the indulgence of the rich, he was frequently able to extract clothing and food, and medicine for the poor. Well and wisely did he think that if all the benevolence that sprung from mixed motives should immediately cease, and that if nothing were to be done for the miseries and sufferings of humanity but from the purest and most intellectual motives, a mass of good would be withdrawn from society, the absence of which it would painfully and deeply feel. To his view there was some use in splendid hospitals, even in their splendor; and he was not wanting in the ingenuity that could manage to indulge those benevolent ones who delighted in the chiaro oscuro of benevolence, and who wished to have the credit of unostentatious charity, and to make their darkness visible: for if unostentatious benevolence is good, it ought to be known to exist for the sake of example; and as there is much merit in it, that merit should not go unrewarded. Mr. Henderson was also of opinion, if elegant people by going to church could benefit the world by the force of example, it was a pity not to indulge them with something that might render church agreeable and pleasant. The public he knew did not analyse the motives or think of the taste of the church-going gentry; they merely saw and knew the fact, and that fact had its influence on the public mind. It was something to the world that the gentry and nobility should go to church; but it was nothing to the world that the gentry and nobility in going to church should there find gratification of their taste, and be as much delighted with the fine-turned periods and graceful utterance of the preacher, as they are by the elegant evolutions of the opera-dancer. Mr. Henderson in his younger days had been as wise as any mental hero of one-and-twenty, he had seen the nothingness and vanity of the world of fashion, and he had declaimed in his early themes on the dignity of man and the purity of motives; but growing up, he found that he could not model the world according to his own pattern, and instead of turning cynic and snarling at the world by way of teaching it wisdom and sobriety, he became a popular preacher, and he was very much admired, and he enjoyed the admiration, but he could see through it, and he had the good sense not to overvalue himself for it. He had read Mandeville, and he found that the analysis of motive, however agreeable an employment for the mind, was but a thankless task, and that people would not believe what they did not like to believe; and since he had become a father, he found that the best mode of managing children was by flattery, and that the encouraging though not always accurate expression of commendation "There's a good boy!" did much more for the cause of virtue and order than a more strict and book-like kind of philosophy. And so he managed those children of a larger growth, to whose ears his lips distilled the honied eloquence of Sunday exhortation. Such was Mr. Henderson's character; and whether it be good, bad, or indifferent, whether it be execrable or admirable, we decide not. It may however be easily imagined, that with such a character and under such circumstances he would not be offensive to old John Martindale; and it may be also as easily imagined, that he would not be very likely to induce a mind constituted as that of Signora Rivolta to renounce the religion in which she had been educated. Many, however, were the attempts made by Mr. Martindale to introduce and continue discussions for that purpose; and Signora Rivolta could very readily discern the altitude of Mr. Henderson's mind as regarded controversial discussion. It appeared to her, that Mr. Henderson was a person more likely to be converted in Italy than to convert in England.
One good, however, clearly accrued from the frequent and encouraged visits of Mr. Henderson to the Woodstocks and Martindales; namely, that the old gentleman was rendered rather less cynical, and more Catholic in his general notions and views of society. The contrast between the characters of the popular preacher and the old gentleman was very great, but the collision was not attended with unpleasant effects, because both of them had natural good-humor, and because Mr. Henderson had been long practised in the habit of managing the opulent, and yielding himself gracefully to their humors and whims.
In process of time, Mr. Martindale liked the preacher so much that he felt inclined to patronise him, should it be found on inquiry that patronage was desirable. But the old gentleman thought as many others had thought, that a man so situated could not stand in need of patronage, but must be well provided for. He did not think how heedless the world in general was towards such as ministered to their pleasures, and that they regarded the metropolitan Sunday lecturer as the minister to their Sunday pleasures, thinking him, if they thought at all, amply remunerated for his labors by the honor of their attendance and approbation.