made the hearts, alone can harmonize them, by the infusion of common views, and hopes, and joys." It was here that those tempestuous feelings in Gustavus of which we spoke, broke out, and proved that man sometimes bows to other idols than those of wood and stone.

"Emily then being as good as she is," he said hastily, "I may love her; but, even were she otherwise, I should still hope to make her my own. Let her have love—and religion would follow.”

"I wished never to tell you the history of Madam de N." replied M. in his somewhat abrupt manner, "till it could be useful to you. This speech of yours convinces me you ought to hear it."

Gustavus rejoiced at this casual completion of a wish he had more than once expressed in vain ; and M. thus proceeded:

"The first words which Caroline St. Amand ever heard from the lips of her parents were those by which they taught her to honour God and her knees were bent and her hands clasped in the attitude of devotion long before it was possible for her to know the object of prayer. They loved indeed to see her rehearse, from the first, those scenes of piety which they trusted she would act upon the stage of life. She lived with them there

fore as in a temple, and soon felt every where that fear of doing wrong which even the worst sometimes manifest in spots sacred to religion. The happiness of this small circle, however, was soon to be disturbed. Those who are the fittest for eternity seem often to be first called to the enjoyment of it. Her father died suddenly by a fever when she was ten years old; and her mother did not long survive him. The desire of her parents had been, that Caroline should be sent for the completion of her education to the place of her birth—a spot no less retired and romantic than St. Foy; and where a person resided every way fitted for the task. It was there she became that enthusiast in nature we have found her; and it was there she made her own those principles which the last breath of a parent had bequeathed to her. She, at first, respected religion for their sakes, and then loved it for its own.. At the age of eighteen, however, she was summoned to the house of one of her relations who had undertaken the charge of her. He was a man singular in no respect; but one who, living in a capital, walked with the great herds of it, neither bending to the right hand nor to the left, to take an unusual step in the way of virtue. As Caroline quitted those

oaks which, from a child, had waved their broad arms over her in defiance of the tempest, she thought whether the world would amidst its own storms, provide her friends such as these ; and as they bowed their tall heads to the passing wind, she acknowledged it as a sort of silent language by which they bade her farewell. If,' she said to

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her melancholy companion, the spirit could take any visible form, you would often see me wan6 dering amidst these shades we have loved together. If not,' replied her aged friend, I shall 'hope to meet that spirit elsewhere.' Caroline soon left her retirement, casting almost that long'ing lingering look behind' which they cast, who are passing from one world to another.

"But she was at an age when our opinions sit loosely upon us; and when, if the tastes and passions seem to take a stronger hold, still they are ready to quit it for any new object. It is not a matter of surprise therefore, that she had not been long placed in her new residence before she began to feel the influence of that fascination which the walls of a great city are known to exercise upon those whom they encircle. The child of solitude indeed, especially where the wide difference between the world and retirement has not been

fairly stated, is very apt to go into the world unprepared for the conflicts of it. Caroline fell a victim, in part, to this indiscretion. She had exchanged the rocks and trees, her former companions, for living creatures; and she soon caught something of the surrounding animation, and began rather to court dissipation than to retreat from

it.

“During this time, although the principles she had at first learned, filled as large a place in her mind as ever, she naturally did not call them up to her view as frequently as before. She had not indeed abandoned them, but she had in a degree laid them by; little thinking that negligence is scarcely less fatal to them than opposition. I mention this state of her mind because it explains the circumstances which followed.-In this fatal hour M. de N.. was introduced. He was a man to whose person and mind nature had given the most noble and masculine features; but she could not climb to Heaven to steal for him that sacred fire, without which, man had better have continued to slumber amidst his fellow-atoms in the dust. Religion, however, was less missed in him, who, without it, seemed to wear many of its graces; and Caroline, especially, was not at an age when,

feelings, still there is in religion or irreligion a kind of omnipresence, by which they are seen and felt in every thing which their possessors say or do. She soon saw therefore, that, if she attempted to touch the string of religion, there was within him nothing which answered; that whilst she hoped to walk as a stranger and pilgrim in this world, he made it his home; that if he did right, it was frequently without a motive, or from a false one. It was plain also, that he did not love her for her piety, but rather winked at it; that he viewed it as her weak point-as a kind of dead weight, which her other excellencies alone could balance.

"I need not explain to you the effects of this discovery upon Caroline, or her sensations, when she saw herself cast upon the world with such a guide. I have often, in my own mind, compared her situation to that of the unhappy creatures, who, as it is said, not unfrequently, in the northern seas, quit their boats in search of prey, and land upon the floating fields of ice: where suddenly some shock cuts off the morsel on which they rest, and they are launched into the vast deep, with no friend but their icy carriage.

"Of her conduct I must say, and my intimacy