Redwood, who waking suddenly, exclaimed, "good heavens, Miss what's your name, are you up already? do be good enough to go to bed again-I can never sleep when any one is hazing about my room; and close the blind if you please, the light disturbs me."

Ellen smiled, but not thinking it important to explain the cause of her being up at an hour that Miss Redwood deemed so unseasonable, she let fall a neatly woven rush curtain, which sufficiently excluded the intrusion of the approaching day; and, laying herself on her bed, she was soon in a sleep that Miss Redwood might have envied.

105

CHAPTER VI.

Thus Aristippus mourned his noble race,

Annihilated by a double blow,

Nor son could hope, nor daughter more t'embrace,
And all Cyrene saddened at his wo."

Comper

DOCTOR BRISTOL called, on his patient the succeeding day; he found him feverish, and petulant in spite of his habitual politeness; he complained that the opiate had not been powerful enough. He anticipated a long delay; he was used to disappointment, and for himself could bear it; but he dreaded to encounter his daughter's impatience. Doctor Bristol understood too well the arts of his vocation, he was too sagacious a practitioner, not to have observed that a skilful application to the mind is often a surer remedy than any favourite or fashionable drug. He accounted satisfactorily to Mr. Redwood for the increase of fever; he detected and brought to light many favourable symptoms; spoke of a ball which was to be given in the village, and intimated that some of the most respectable inhabitants would wait on Miss Redwood, and deem themselves honoured by her presence. He produced some late newspapers which he had procured at the

post-office; the last foreign reviews; and succeeded in producing as sudden a change of symptoms as an empiric would have promised.

Mr. Redwood described the extraordinary scene he had witnessed during the night; asked many questions, and with particular interest in relation to the young lady whose face and demeanour had impressed him as belonging to an elevated sphere. Doctor Bristol assured him, that his sagacity was not at fault, for Miss Bruce (the young lady in question) was not a member of the Lenox family, but a stranger at Eton, and a friend of the Allens. Mr. Redwood said that the various modes of religious superstition always interested him; he was amused with seeing how willing man was to be the dupe of his own inventions; and intimating, that in the eye of experience and enlightened observation, all the forms of religious faith were equally absurd; shackles which men imposed, or wore, from tyranny or imbecility, he concluded by insinuating a compliment upon the free-thinking which was so common among the enlightened of the doctor's profession. Doctor Bristol, without assuming the attitude of combat, or seeming entirely to comprehend the drift of Mr. Redwood's remarks, observed, that there were, in his fraternity, some distinguished exceptions to the charge which had been laid against them. Every one acknowledged the authority of Boerhaave's name," and our own Rush," he said, (speaking with honourable pride of his master,)" is among the most humane and en

lightened of philosophers, and the most humble of christians." Mr. Redwood perceived that he had not proceeded with his usual tact; that he had presumed too far upon what he considered the necessary result of Doctor Bristol's general intellience. He avoided any farther remarks which might have a tendency to disclose his own sentiments, and confined himself to comments on the persons he had observed the preceding night. He said he hardly knew whether the opinions of those people seemed to him most ridiculous or shocking. "Truly, he knew not which most to pity; the poor old woman who fancied a silly girl must lose all chance of salvation, because forsooth, she had forsaken the world, and in good faith joined a gloomy and self-denying order; or her child, the shaking quaker who had immolated every right and natural affection to an imaginary duty; who had forsaken all that made life a blessing, to follow an ignorant fanatic, or an impudent imposter." The doctor acknowledged that such mistakes were lamentable; the result of limited knowledge, or accidental prejudices. Still, he thought, that while we lamented the errors to which we were liable, we might rejoice that the light we enjoyed was light from heaven, though its clearness must depend somewhat on the purity of the atmosphere into which it was introduced; the mists of ignorance might dim, but did not extinguish its pure ray. If an immortal hope led these people to some unnecessary sacrifices, it stimulated them to those that were necessary; for he believed there

was no variety of the christian faith, however distorted from the perfection of the original model, which did not insist on a pure morality.

The doctor invited Mr. Redwood to observe the state of things about him; the wise and excellent institutions which had sprung from the religion of the pilgrims; the intelligence and morality that pervaded the mass of the people, which might be said to emanate from the principle of equality, derived from the christian code. He spoke of the religious zeal and the active benevolence which pervades our society, which, not neglecting the means of moral regeneration at home, sends its missionaries to the fearful climate of the east; to the barbarians of the south, and to the savages of our own dangerous wilderness. These noble efforts were not, as in older countries, supported by the pious zeal of a few of the bountiful, or the gifts of the penitent rich, who by a kind of spiritual commutation, expected to purchase, by their brilliant charities, the remission of their sins; but, for the most part, they were the fruit of the virtuous selfdenials and exertions of the laborious classes of the community.

Mr. Redwood listened with more patience than could have been expected from one who had philosophic prejudices; more inveterate perhaps, than those which spring from the conceit of ignorance, because they are fortified by the pride of knowledge, and assume the form of independent opinions which is so flattering to our self-love. There