How much soever the reader may be disposed to censure the doctor, it was from an enthusiastic bigotry that he acted, more than from any designing immorality. In fact the doctor was a church-going man, and under the im-: pression of doing his duty as a Christian, he favoured the matter of Charles and Caroline; but he favoured it principally from a firm belief in the doctrine of predestinated marriages.

For the doctor, in an argument with a young loose fellow who argued for the preaching of deism, maintained that "there was no need for clergy-. men to this faith, since its disciples were found mostly among the rich and voluptuous, who, he declared, had most reason, if the corruption of their hearts had not been a prolific source of their errors, to extol the goodness. of Providence ;" and he always maintained that "superstition was found

among those who had the most just reason to complain."

He would for hours together reason to prove his hypothesis, by showing that, amid the luxury of Greece and Rome, and in the bosom of the wealth of India, of the magnificence of Persia, and the voluptuousness of China, men first appeared who ventured to deny the existence of a Deity; and he would affirm, on the contrary, that the Tartars, destitute of habitation; the savages of America, constantly pressed with fa mine; the negroes, without foresight or policy; the natives of the rude climates of the north, the Laplanders, the Greenlanders, and the Esquimaux, saw gods everywhere, even in trees and the very pebbles on their shores.

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His conclusion was generally in this strain: "In short, atheism appears to be with the rich an argument of conscience; because they are rich, they

will be knaves in the article of the Christian faith; therefore with them there is no God;-horrible infidelity!"

"But," the doctor would add, "there are atheists who possess legitimate fortunes, and use them well; and there are poor wretches who, because they are industrious and honest but miserable, argue that there cannot be a Providence ;-horrible infidelity!".

When Charles and the doctor had arrived at the latter's house, they were both very agreeably received by Mrs. Marshall; the doctor as being her dear husband, and Charles as being dear Mr. Marshall's friend; and Charles was introduced to Miss Marshall...

This young lady united to the finest figure, and the most bewitching coun tenance nature could bestow, an uncommon share of that quality, which among the young ladies of her acquaintance was called prudence, but

what the married folks called address: she was easy in her manners, and pleasant in her look, and yet in that look there was something forbidding to a stranger: she talked fluently on any subject, on which, in public, or in company, a young lady is supposed to have liberty to speak; and yet she never seemed to lead the conversation, nor to wish to be heard for her much speaking; and in two hours, Charles could not perceive that she was more free from feminine restraint than when she first said "sir;" and it was the universal opinion of her friends, that Miss Marshall was "the same at a twelve'month's end she was the first hour one was in her society."

She had read much, and had been a good deal in company; but what she chiefly had read was biography. There was not therefore, a poet, an historian, a statesman, a general, or a monarch,

of whom she could not relate some little anecdote, that pleased and amused the company she was in; and her commonplace book was nearly filled with anecdotes arising out of the circle of her acquaintance, or dragged into that ring by the frequent sinuosities which the loco-motion of the inner end of its radius compelled the periphery to take.

i. In the company of this young lady Charles had not long sate, till he believed himself in the grotto of one of the muses. But from the reverie into which Julia Marshall had thrown him, Charles was aroused by the doctor requesting he would walk into the library.

It was all a scheme; Caroline had just come to the house, and the prudent doctor would first let her have some chit-chat with Julia: and Julia, who had as much taciturnity on this