popish doctrines, and Protestants may reason respecting them as the rule of faith of the Romish Church. It is true that they were not received with the same degree of implicit submission, by all the countries which continued to profess themselves followers of the Church of Rome; and in Protestant countries at the present day, the Papists are unwilling to admit fully, that they, as such, are bound by the decrees of the Counci! of Trent; their policy appears to consist in continually shifting their position, and presenting new forms of defence, which being of a shadowy and mysterious nature, are incapable of being overturned by plain reason, or other means which might be used against their errors if advanced in a more substantial form. The Protestant, on the other hand, uses no subterfuge whereby he may confound his enemies, and escape the consequences to which the principles he recognises must lead; but simply maintains his belief in Scripture, and asserts that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation.

But I forgot that I am writing for such as cannot be supposed to enter fully into discussions of this nature. I shall therefore avoid going more deeply into them, simply requesting my youthful reader to bear these things in mind, namely, that of the two principal orders of persons calling themselves Christians, the first, namely, the Protestants, profess to take the Bible as their rule of life and of belief; the second, the Papists bind themselves to obey the commandments of their Church, of which the pope is, as they pretend, the father, the spiritual head, the absolute and infallible ruler; and the priests of that Church assume to themselves a power and authority far beyond that of any mortal being, in all matters connected with religion.

When first admitted to my cure, the family at the chateau consisted of many individuals; but one and another of these being removed by death or marriage, Madame la Baronne only was left to us after a few years, and such was the kindness and amiable deportment of this lady, that it was commonly said of her, that all the virtues of the long and illustrious line of ancestry, of which she was the last in that part of the country, had

centered in her. In fact, her conduct merited our sincere affection and gratitude; but when we are made acquainted, through the divine teaching, with the fallen and corrupt state of human nature, we dare not to use or admit that high strain of panegyric which more presumptuous individuals employ without apprehension.

Between the village and the chateau stood our church, built also of grey stone, in the Norman Gothic style, and near to the church was a large dark timbered house, with two gable ends pointed with wooden crosses, where lived a decayed gentlewoman, a widow, whom I shall call Madame Bulè.

This lady being an accomplished woman for that day, and much reduced in her fortune, received young ladies into her house for their education, and was, I believe, as far as the dark state of her mind would admit, a faithful and laborious guide to her young people.

Near to Madame Bulé's seminary was my own little mansion, nay, so near, that the window of my study, which was an upper room, projected over the garden wall of the seminary, and I used often to amuse myself by showering sugar-plums

from thence upon the little ones who were assembled on the lawn beneath.

From the period of my entering upon my charge until I was more than forty years of age, I enjoyed a long interval of comparative peace. I was fond of a retired life. I had a peculiar delight in the study of nature, and in that part of it especially which refers to the formation and beautiful variety of the vegetable world. `I made a collection of all the plants in the neighbourhood, and would walk miles, for the chance of obtaining a new specimen. I had other pursuits of the same kind, which filled up the intervals of my professional duties, and through the divine goodness, kept me from worse things during those years of my life in which I certainly had not that sense of religion which would have upheld me in situations of stronger excitement. Thus I was carried on in a comparatively blameless course through a long period of my life, for which I humbly thank my God, and take no manner of credit to myself; though I feel that it is a mercy for which an individual cannot be too grateful, when he is brought to a sense of sin and to a knowledge of his own weakness, to

find that in the days of his spiritual darkness he has been guarded, on the right hand and on the left, from shoals and rocks and whirlpools, in which wiser persons than himself have made terrible shipwreeks. But, as I said above, I was led on from year to year in a sort of harmless course; and whereas I enjoyed much peace, so was the same bestowed upon my neighbours in general, in a larger proportion than could have been expected, when the agitated state of our country, as it regarded religion and politics, is brought under consideration. In the mean time, the little establishment of Madame Bulè was carried on in a manner so peaceful and tranquil, that it can hardly be questioned but that the protecting hand of providence was extended over this academy, although undoubtedly the instructions there received, partook of the spiritual darkness at that period spread over the whole country.

At length, however, as Madame became less able to exert herself, and as new modes of instruction and more fashionable accomplishments became requisite, in order to satisfy the parent's of her scholars, she thought it right to procure