The gray-headed priest at the altar was solemnly chanting, from the beautiful liturgy of the Church, as he knelt down on the hard aisle, and the branching ceiling seemed to catch and repeat the notes.

Through the stained window, where was pictured in unfading colors many a scene suggesting the goodness and mercy of God, and the blessed tidings of salvation, came the fading light of day, softened and beautiful.

It was not merely the superior genius of the age that made the chapels and cathedrals of the Ages of Faith so immensely superior to the creations of the present day, but its piety too; that generous and pure devotion which induced our ancestors to employ their best faculties and richest treasures in preparing an abode as worthy as earth could make it of the presence of the Son of God.

Then the house of the minister was not more splendid than his church, his sideboard not more valuable than the altar.
Gilbert saw around him the hard, sunburnt features, the stalwart forms he had marked in the desperate fray; he could touch the hands, now clasped in prayer, that had been so often raised against him in anger.
Beside him knelt the maiden, with her brow all smooth and unfurrowed by care, and the matron who, numbering more than double her years, had felt more than treble her sorrows.

The youth was deeply moved, as he gazed, and thought he might have robbed that mother of her son, that wife of her husband, that sister of a brother.