avoided company, and spent whole hours in her closet, where she wept and prayed by turns.
She told Henrietta, that the world and all its pleasures were grown insipid to her; that her whole soul was filled with divine love; and that the thoughts and exercises of religion made up all her happiness. She then passionately regretted that there were no religious communities among the protestants, where a mind that was weaned from this sublunary world, and all its vanities, might freely indulge its pious contemplations, and devote itself entirely to Heaven. "Oh, how happy are the nuns!" she exclaimed;
how I envy them! Sure nothing can be more delightful, when persons are truly pious, than to live in a religious society excluded from all commerce with a world they must certainly despise. I think I should be perfectly happy if I was in a cloister.


Henrietta congratulated her upon her new sentiments, but endeavoured to prove that there was more merit in passing through life with innocence, and in rightly performing 〈…〉, than in flying to the gloomy solitude 〈◊〉••ister, where virtue is secured by bolts and ••rs, and the exercises of religion performed as a penance. She recommended to her the study of the scriptures, and put some practical treatises of religion, written by the best authors on that subject, into her hands: but the zeal of this new convert was so flaming, that nothing would serve her but a total retirement from the world; and she made such frequent visits to a convent, where a friend of her's had lately taken the veil, that Henrietta was apprehensive the nuns would discover the true state of her mind and take advantage of her passions to pervert he• principles, and secure her to themselves.
While these whims possessed her, she was so inaccessible to all visiters, that Mr. Melvil could with difficulty get admittance. Freeman saw the progress of his passion with great uneasiness and, finding that he could not be prevailed upon to leave Paris, resolved to write to his father and give him a hint of the dangerous attach•ment his son had formed, that he might se•

him a peremptory command to return to England; but before he could execute this design, Melvil, to his great surprise, told him, that he would leave Paris in two days. The poor youth expected his friend would have expressed some joy at this news; and, being disappointed at his receiving with indifference what had cost him so many pangs to resolve upon,
"You make me no compliments," said he, with a tender smile,
upon the conquest I have gained