his heart was at peace within him. Prayer with him was not a beginning form, but a consummation of his better purposes."

The sweet girl could not forbear weeping again while she was giving me this interesting account. I felt as if I had never loved her till then. To see her so full of sensibility without the slightest tincture of romance, so feeling, yet so sober-minded, enchanted me. I could now afford to wish heartily for Lord Staunton's reformation, because it was not likely to interfere with my hopes. And now the danger was over, I even endeavored to make myself believe that I should have wished it in any event, so treacherous will the human heart be found by those who watch its motions. And it proceeds from not watching them that the generality are so little acquainted with the evils which lurk within it.

Before I had time to express half what I felt to the fair narrator the party came in. They seemed as much puzzled at the position in which they found Lucilla and myself, she wiping her eyes, and I standing by in admiration, as I had been at her mysterious interview with Mrs. Carlton. The Belfields knew not what to make of it. The mother's looks expressed astonishment and anxiety. The father's eye demanded an explanation. All this mute eloquence passed in an instant. Miss Stanley gave them not time to inquire. She flew to her mother, and eagerly repeated the little tale which furnished matter for grateful joy and improving conversation the rest of the evening.

Mr. Stanley expressed a thorough confidence in the sincerity of Carlton. "He had always," continued he, "in his worst days an abhorrence of deceit, and such a dread of people appearing better than they are, that he even commended that most absurd practice of Dean Swift, who, you know, used to perform family prayers in a garret, for fear any one should call in and detect him in the performance." Carlton defended this as an honorable instance of Swift's abhorrence of ostentation in religion. I opposed it on the more probable ground of his being ashamed of it. For allowing, what however never can be allowed, that an ordinary man might have some excuse for the dread of being sneered at, as wanting to be thought righteous overmuch; yet in a churchman, in a dignified churchman, family prayer would be expected as a customary decency, an indispensable appendage to his situation, which, though it might be practiced without piety, could not be omitted without disgrace, and which even a