ments of worldly people are borrowed from the Christian religion, and put on as a cloak to hide real deformity."

After this conversation, several more weeks passed quietly away, during which Edgar was receiving many ideas respecting religion, which in due time produced their desired effect, as we shall see in the sequel. But Mr. Dalben found from day to day that there was more and more to set right with regard to the principles of the young man; that is, if he could be said to have possessed any settled principles of any description.

The following old couplet might have suited Edgar Bonville when he first came to Mr. Dalben's, quite as well as it may be supposed to have done its original subject:

"Your morals are bad,” said Dick to his son : ""Tis false," said the other, "because I have none."

Mrs. Bonville, indeed, had always boasted of her son's good morals, on the strength of a certain natural sweetness of disposition which he possessed, and of that graciousness and urbanity which was remarkable in his manners; but the fact was, as Mr. Dalben soon discovered,

that he had scarcely one correct principle. His mind was full of those vulgar errors which worldly persons generally entertain, we use the word vulgar in its classical acceptation,— and if he preserved decorum in his outward conduct, it was rather the effect of that same sweetness of disposition spoken of above, than of any better feeling.

We might enumerate some of these vulgar errors for the satisfaction of our readers, though we cannot suppose that such will ever be entertained by any young gentleman who may honour this volume by his perusal.

At first, Mr. Bonville held it as a matter of belief that every person might be saved by the religion which he professed, be it the worship of Baal, Dagon, or Astarte, that of the Crescent or the Cross, (for he classed all these together,) provided he was sincere in his faith, and inasmuch as he did not exclude good works: he also believed that a moral man, having no creed whatever, was also equally sure of everlasting happiness. These were his religious tenets; and his moral principles were equally liberal and undefined. He held the revenge of an affront even unto death, as being quite necessary to the character of a gentleman. He had no very clear notions of there being any

turpitude in such double dealings as may promote a man's advancement in the world, provided such double dealings did not smell too much of the shop, or indicate too much of the spirit of the common tradesman. Then as to truth, his ideas respecting that point were extremely lax; and there were even some transactions in life in which he conceived it perfectly fair to deceive, as far as he possibly could: the nature of these transactions may be supposed. With regard to money matters, his plan was to get as much of the pecuniæ as he could lay his hands on, without entirely forfeiting his character; and hence he would boast among his associates of having come over his mother for such and such sums, and would triumph with a companion who boasted that his father or uncle bled freely. Yet with all this, there were some pleasing points in the character of Edgar. He was not as yet wholly hardened—he did not yet love sin for the sake of sin, and he could love and admire holiness when displayed before him in its beauty and excellence, (imperfect beauty indeed, and only comparative excellence,) as in the characters of Mr. Dalben and Henry Milner; and these better points were instantly seen by Mr. Dalben, and seized by him as a skilful groom would seize the bridle of a spirited and

rampant steed; and had any observant person been present, he would not have failed to have admired the skill and address with which this excellent man endeavoured to correct one and another of the false principles of his pupil; and, as it were, to redeem his mind from the swamps and marshes of error with which it was infested, and to fix therein a firm and solid basis for those divine truths which it was his earnest desire to establish. In this work there was not wanting a severe exercise of patience, but it was very seldom that Mr. Dalben was exposed to any thing like rudeness; on the contrary, he had rather to regret too much facility in the character of his pupil, who would allow himself to be convinced too soon, rather than, like our friend Marten, carry on an argument long after he was himself convinced of its fallacy.

But days passed on, as I before said, and the two first of the four Worcestershire harvests were got in, and the season for gathering the hops was arrived; in consequence of which multitudes of persons from the neighbouring manufacturing districts poured into the country, having been previously engaged by the farmers to assist them to gather in their hops. Fashionable families repair in the summer to our sea-bathing and watering-places, and no doubt our

London citizens have much enjoyment in their excursions to Margate, Ramsgate, Brighton, &c. But what are the enjoyments of these, to those of the Kidderminster weavers and Dudley iron manufacturers on the joyful occasion of the hop-picking, when, in the finest season of the year, they find it their interest to migrate in large bodies from their dark and sooty domiciles, into the more pure, fresh, and verdant scenes of rural life-where they are fed at the expense of their masters, and may have the additional satisfaction of robbing every orchard near which they pass, and displaying the finery of their wives and daughters in the village churches before the wondering eyes of all the servant-maids in the parish. If these persons bring with them much of their manufacturing morals and manners, and are too often the pests of the villages into which they enter, yet it is much to be feared that they do not find much of that rural simplicity in our farm-houses and cottages, which have afforded so many subjects for the panegyrics of our bards for generations past, because unregenerate man is every where corrupt; and if vices abound in towered cities, we believe that they are only less abundant in scenes of retirement, because there are fewer persons to act viciously.