All levities of speech, and negligences of behaviour, were proscribed.

His air was mournful and contemplative.
He laboured to keep alive a sentiment of fear, and a belief of the awe-creating presence of the Deity.

Ideas foreign to this were sedulously excluded.

To suffer their intrusion was a crime against the Divine Majesty inexpiable but by days and weeks of the keenest agonies.
No material variation had occurred in the lapse of two years.

Every day confirmed him in his present modes of thinking and acting.