The boy felt he was going to be denounced; when a merry laugh from the old clergyman averted the storm.
"Be content," he said to his companion; "we are Gothic enough in Oxford nowadays.

And the lad is right too.

There was hope even for eighteenth-century Magdalen while its buildings looked on sunlight and on that tower.

You and the rest of us lay too much stress on prayer.

The lesson of that tower (with all deference to your amazing discernment and equally amazing whims) is not prayer, but praise.
And when all men unite to worship God, it'll be praise, not prayer, that brings them together.
"'Praise is devotion fit for noble minds, The differing world's agreeing sacrifice.'" "Oh, if you're going to fling quotations from a tapster's son at my head.