Sir, entertaining these opinions, you will no longer blame me for having conducted the education of your little son in the manner which I have described.

Here Mr. Gisborne paused, as if waiting my father's reply; but he might have waited long, for my father remained silent, with every appearance of being lost in deep meditation. At length Mr. Gisborne ventured to express a hope that he had not given offence by so sincere and explicit an avowal of his opinion.

"Offence, my good Sir!" said my father, rising and giving the old gentleman his hand; "far be it from me to take offence at the manner in which you have pleaded a cause of such paramount interest. Your opinions are so entirely new to me, that I cannot at once receive them; but I respect your motives of conduct, and more than suspect that you are right. And if you are right, then we are all wrong, and acting under a kind of influence which we little suspect. My daughter will commit your arguments to writing; I will take occasion to meditate upon them; and will sometime hence give you the result of my meditations. In the mean time, my good Sir, go on with the blessed work which you have begun. I commit the sole representative of my departed child to your care without reserve; only, do not leave my house; do not take my child from me; but rather allow his only remaining parent the benefit of your conversation. You may perhaps be enabled to effect such a revolution in my mind as you now have little reason to anticipate."

So saying, my father left the room; and a few moments afterwards, I observed him as he hastened out of the house, to meditate, no doubt, in solitude on the late conference.

For some months after the above discussion, it appeared that both my father and Mr. Gisborne purposely avoided any renewal of this particular subject of discourse; although my father not unfrequently, when alone with me, acknowledged that he had been considerably affected by Mr. Gisborne's arguments, and that he even began to entertain strong suspicions that the cause of true religion had long been, and continued to be, greatly injured by the prevalence of heathen writings, heathen imagery, and heathen principles, not only on the Continent, but also in England itself, that blessed country, where the purest doctrines of

the Gospel are maintained and disseminated by the highest earthly authorities.

I could say much of what passed between my father and myself at these times, but should probably be only repeating many things which I have had occasion to put down in the former part of my narrative. Suffice it to say, that my father's conviction of the truth was so much stronger than mine, and my own tenaciousness in favour of former prejudices so unyielding, that I did not scruple to avow to him that I was so far from being convinced by Mr. Gisborne's statements, that, on the contrary, I felt an assurance, if his plan was to be universally adopted, we should presently witness a return of Gothic barbarians, and have another edition of the dark ages.

I have hitherto represented myself, at least, in a tolerable point of view; but the depravity of the human heart very rarely appears in its true colours, until something arises to stir up and awaken its naturally unhallowed propensities. A river which runs in its channel without obstruction, may rush along with violent force, though this force may neither be observed nor suspected by the person who walks quietly upon its banks; but when any obstruction is presented to its passage, it fails not to evidence such a magnitude of resistance as no artificial mound can effectually oppose. So was it with me, as long as my father's general habits and opinions coincided with my own :-while he presented no obstruction to my general ways of thinking and acting, I appeared all that was amiable and accommodating; but when, influenced by Mr. Gisborne, he once began to suggest the idea that we might perhaps have been mistaken in many of our former views, I failed not to feel in my own mind a considerable degree of displeasure, while 1 evidenced a very unbecoming degree of irritation.

My father had always entertained some general respect for religion, and it seems that, by the divine blessing on his late afflictions, his mind had been in some degree prepared for the reception of Mr. Gisborne's opinions. But I, who had sympathized very slightly with my father in his troubles, was by no means so prepared; and looking upon religion as a gloomy, unsocial feeling, by the adoption of which I should be debarred from all elegant enjoyment, and whose influence would have a tendency to deprive me

of all my pretensions to superior wisdom, I obstinately resisted every conviction, and endeavoured to pour contempt on all that Mr. Gisborne said in its favour. And such, after a while, became the insolence of my manner, as to cause a sudden cessation of all agreeable intercourse between my father and myself; for as his anxiety to convince me very naturally increased with the growth of his own convictions, I at length became so thoroughly exasperated, as to discover the utmost dissatisfaction both with him and with every body about me.

And now my thoughts frequently reverted to that short period of my life in which alone I had tasted what I conceived to be real pleasure, insomuch that, with other bad feelings, an emotion of resentment was excited in my heart against my father, for having cut short what I judged to have been my happiness: and these feelings were indulged so far as to produce a persuasion that, if my father had suffered for his conduct on that occasion, it was no more than he deserved.

The selfishness of the unregenerate heart can hardly be painted with too great strength of colouring. If the saints of God have continual reason to deplore the power of selfishness, even when under the control of grace, how much greater must be the force of our selfish passions when under no control whatever, and allowing of no regulations, but either from considerations of prudence, or from that calculating spirit which, considering what it conceives to be most for its own interests, never gives up the gratification of one passion but in the expectation of some higher feast for another on a future occasion; or from the dread of some punishment which it considers as more than equivalent to the proposed gratification!

With respect to myself, I was not only wholly unchanged by grace, but greatly corrupted by education; almost every idea which I had received from infancy being false, and in many instances of a polluting tendency: and it was at this period when youth naturally begins to throw off somewhat of parental control, and to look out of itself for satisfactions, that these corrupt principles began to produce their worst effect. When I first experienced, in any strong degree, the feeling of dissatisfaction mentioned above, (which dissatisfaction, so commonly felt by young people.

is nothing more than the workings of inbred corruption,) I sought to be much alone; I avoided my parents' society; I repulsed my little nephew whenever he wished to approach me; daily feeding my imagination on the sickly conceits with which my style of reading had supplied me, and which served to heighten rather than allay the feverish restlessness of my mind.

Young persons who have been made acquainted with the principles of true religion, need not be told that our present state of being on earth is not a state of perfect happiness. They are convinced, not only that they must meet with trials, but also that much advantage may arise from them; they have not been accustomed to hear fortune, the fates, or the higher powers, accused of injustice when a great man suffers, or when a beautiful woman is made to shed tears; but they have been taught at least to acknowledge that they are guilty of impiety and ingratitude, if they do not bear the common lot of their sinful race with a decent resignation. Very little however of this submissive spirit is recommended in heathen writers: and though I, who was the early pupil of such writers, could have submitted to any kind of trial attended with circumstances of a splendid and heroic nature, yet I could not endure the thought of spending my youth in the dull and calm routine of domestic life, which was become still less interesting to me since Mr. Gisborne had made one of our party, putting to flight by his grave and formal manner, together with the solidity and seriousness of his remarks, several of those sprightly visitors in whose society my father used to take pleasure.

And now my mind being thus prepared for all manner of evil, Satan speedily provided a temptation for me precisely suited to my case. A letter was, one evening, put into my hand by a servant, who had, no doubt, been bribed for the purpose, from the young Countess of Rheinswald.

Though the artful servant had given me no hint respecting the propriety of concealing this letter, my own evil heart dictated to me the necessity of so doing; and accordingly, on the receipt of it, I hastened to my own room, and closed my door, in order to read it without interruption.

It contained, in the first place, much of that common

place trash which is so frequently found in the correspondence of young people, viz. violent expressions of regard, long extracts from poetical writers on the charms of sympathy, the eternity of friendship, the union of hearts, &c. &c.; together with lamentations for our long and continued separation, mingled with pathetic descriptions of her own miserable feelings in being parted from me, and her utter inability of sustaining life much longer without receiving some short notices respecting my welfare. "Your image, my Ellen," said she, "such as it appeared to me when first I beheld you in the halls of Swetzinghen, is ever present to my imagination, blooming and charming as you then appeared, when the roses in your bosom, and the diamonds which shone in your lovely tresses were eclipsed and put to shame by the brighter bloom of your cheeks, and the brilliance of your sparkling eye. The sweet tones of your voice still vibrate on my ravished ear, while the purity and elegance of your sentiments continue to delight my enraptured heart. O Ellen! would that I had either never seen you, or had met you never more to part!"

Much more was added to this purpose; and had there been volumes, instead of a few pages only, in this style, all might have been well. But like most ladies' letters, the real purport, after an immense redundance of words, was contained in a few short lines at the end-a kind of postscript, in which the countess mentioned her brother, spoke of his unhappy rencontre with my father, attributed it to the violence of his feelings, and described the ill-fated youth as nearly reduced to despair by remorse and disappointment: remorse, for having injured the man he revered most on earth; and disappointment, with regard to the greatest earthly happiness he had ever dared to promise himself.

I read this letter again and again, feasting on its flattery, and taking deep draughts of the poison contained in the postcript. I well knew that the name of Rheinswald was held in abhorrence by both my parents; while therefore I determined not to show them the letter, I resolved to answer it clandestinely-a determination which I soon put in execution, confiding my answer to the care of the artful servant above mentioned.

My epistle to the countess contained nothing very reVOL. III.

H