"And yet," said Sir John, "I remember Seneca says in one of his epistles, that no man expresses such a respect and devotion to virtue as he who forfeits the repute of being a good man, that he may not forfeit the conscience of being such."

"They might," replied Mr. Stanley, "incidentally express some such sentiment, in a well turned period, to give antithesis to an expression, or weight to an apothegm; they might declaim against it in a fit of disappointment in the burst of indignation excited by a recent loss of popularity; but I question if they ever once acted upon it. I question if Marius himself, sitting amid the ruins of Carthage, actually felt it. Seldom, if ever, does it seem to have been inculcated as a principle, or enforced as a rule of action: nor could it—it was against the canon law of their foundation."

"Yet," said Sir John, "a good man struggling with adversity is, I think, represented by one of their authors as an object worthy of the attention of the gods."

"Yes," said Mr. Stanley, "but the divine approbation alone was never proposed as the standard of right, or the reward of actions, except by divine revelation."

"Nothing seems more difficult," said I, "to settle than the standard of right. Every man has a standard of his own, which he considers as of universal application. One makes his own tastes, desires, and appetites, his rule of right; another the example of certain individuals, fallible like himself; a third, and indeed the generality, the maxims, habits, and manners of the fashionable part of the world."

Sir John remarked, "That since it is so difficult to discriminate between allowable indulgence and criminal conformity, the life of a conscientious man, if he be not constitutionally temperate, or habitually firm, must be poisoned with solicitude, and perpetually racked with the fear of exceeding his limits."

"My dear Belfield," replied Mr. Stanley, "the peace and security of a Christian, we well know, are not left to depend on constitutional temperance, or habitual firmness. These are, as the young Numidian says,

Perfections that are placed in bones and nerves.
There is a higher and surer way to prevent the solicitude, which is, by correcting the principle; to get the heart set right; to be jealous over ourselves; to be careful never to venture to the edge of our lawful limits; in short