system could be thoroughly brought to bear upon methere were many above me to be brought to my level before I could think of descending. What wise man, when he would pull down a decayed edifice, would commence by removing the foundation, or even by demolishing a centre arch? Nevertheless, I was not inactive in my plans of improvement. Being settled at my mansion, having given a great entertainment on the occasion, seen a young lady whom I liked, made her my wife, and furnished my drawing-room under her auspices -I found that leisure which I had long desired in order to put some of my plans of reform into exercise within my own domain, where, as I before said, I thought myself a sort of king; and, in fact, there was no one in the parish to contend with me, the very living being in my gift, and the old rector having a comely young scion of a son, who, being also in orders, was waiting with open mouth, like the fox in the fable, for the small benefice, whenever it should happen to fall from the mouth of his father; being, in consequence, very observant of the humours of the patron. I therefore had none to oppose me; and as I proposed no change which was contrary to the law of the land, I found myself at liberty to pull down and set up just as I pleased.

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My first attack was upon the village schoolmaster, who, because he lived in a house of mine, and had a great delight in a garden attached to it, which he had cultivated with his own hand for the last thirty years, was entirely in my power as to his comfort, if not his subsistence.

Hearing that he was in the habit of using coercion with the little urchins placed under his control, and that he not only used that instrument of tyranny with which our birch-trees supplies us whenever he saw occasion, compelling his slaves to hear sermons, learn catechisms, and repeat their creed in their mother tongue, I caused him to be introduced into my august presence, and gave myself an immense deal of trouble to endeavour to persuade him that the rod was quite an unnecessary instrument to be used for the advantage of youth, inasmuch as the mind of a child is by nature pure and spotless as my lady's apron, and incapable of evil, excepting from the influence of example; that the human intellect is always injured by coercion, and that the principles of children ought never to be biased by any creed what

ever, until the mind has obtained sufficient strength to choose and reason for itself-with much more to the same purpose, which these gentlemen may add from the stores of their own mind.

"I have often been much hurt on looking back on this transaction of my life," continued the old gentleman, "and though I then laughed heartily at the perplexity and horror which the schoolmaster exhibited while I was thus lecturing him, it is with great pain that even now, at this remote period, I tell the consequences of my folly-for the poor pedagogue, being deprived of his rod and his Bible, fell suddenly into a sort of dotage, from which he was soon after released by death; and another being put in his place, the dominion of misrule received no further check from that time for some years in the schoolhouse of Plus Caervon, than was absolutely necessary to prevent the little urchins, notwithstanding the purity of their minds, from tearing each other to pieces, and burning down the house; but I was too much engaged with other plans of reform to look very closely into the effect of this my first attempt.

"My next attack was made upon the ancient usages and customs of the Lord's day; I chose to assert that I could not see any manner of harm in sports and amusements on that day. 'Poor creatures,' I used to say, when speaking of the labouring classes, 'they are tied to the cart's tail and the churn all the week round, and are they to be deprived of every species of pleasure on the only day of the seven which the cruel usages of society have allowed them?'

"It may be easily imagined what the effect of such a sentiment as this would be, when proceeding from a man of so much power and influence as I possessed in my little nook. I had annihilated order and piety in the place of education, and I now proceeded to empty the church and fill the alehouse, the bowling-green, and the fives'-court, not to speak of the many immoral and unruly assemblies which took place in the cottages and farmhouses, the sure consequences of a day of leisure recurring regularly, and having no appropriate employment of a purifying and sanctifying nature.

"In the meantime, my conversation at my own table, and in the presence of my visiters and dependants, had always the same tendency; namely, it was my constant object to heap the evils of life (the consequences

of the sin and imperfection of our nature) upon the existing authorities. If a son did ill, I always laid the blame in some way or other on the father; if a daughter forgot herself, her error was owing to her mother's harshness; if a wife went wrong, the husband had been too severe with her. I ridiculed the clergy, and maintained that their religion was all for filthy lucre, and I spoke of all persons in temporal authority as being unjust and cruel tyrants. Although, it must be observed, that I required all those who were immediately about my person to be very subservient to my peculiar comforts, and there were enough of those who found it their interest to keep me in good-humour, to preserve me for some years from feeling any inconvenience, as an individual, from the rapid march of immorality within my domain. At length, however, it was no longer possible for me to remain in ignorance of the ill effects of my reformation system: as the elder and more sober inhabitants of the parish passed away, and the younger ones, who had been brought up under my plans, entered into responsible situations, the effects of my folly began to display themselves. My tenants broke, and ran away in my debt, one after another; my servants cheated me on all sides. I had a mine in one of the mountains, and instead of being a considerable gainer, I found myself a loser by it. In short, every thing went wrong. I railed and fretted at the ingratitude of mankind. I have been an indulgent father to these people, I said, and now are they all bent on my destruction. In short, I could endure the place no longer. I procured an agent-a man of the law; I established him in full power in my house, and set out for the continent with Mrs. Gwynne and my two elder daughters, leaving a son about three years of age, and an infant daughter, under the care of a faithful nurse, in my mansion.

"I felt I had managed matters horribly, but I was too proud to confess my error; nevertheless, my spirits rose in proportion as I was more and more distant from the scenes of my plans of reformation, and my wife partook of my feelings of pleasure. However, though I was aware that I had utterly failed, I was not humbled, or convinced that I had done wrong. I did not yet see that I had acted pragmatically and irrationally. I had refused, and still refused, the light of divine revelation. I had calculated as a heathen would do, who, in

planning a reformation of society, is not acquainted with that which Scripture tells us in almost every form of words which could be devised for the exhibition of truth, namely, the total depravity of human nature, which is continually using all the ingenuity of selfishness to counteract the laws and arrangements of those in authority. Hence it is certain that no laws, no forms of government, no plans of legislation, no human politics, can ever entirely reach the evils they are meant to counteract. The laws may protect an individual from open violence, and inflict a punishment on actual crime, but religion only can so insinuate itself into the bosom of society as to banish all those acts of secret and retired unkindness, tyranny, and dishonesty, by which the intercourse of those dwelling together in one house is imbittered, and all the sources of domestic harmony impoisoned."

At this moment we entered the town where we were to dine, when our worthy companion, particularly addressing me, said, "Good madam, if you are not tired of my story, I will tell you, when we are again seated in our vehicle after dinner, how that order, which I had used all my power and influence to destroy within my domain, was restored through the medium of one whom, in the days of my sinful pride, I should scarcely have counted worthy to wipe my shoes."

Having taken our dinner, and being again seated as before, we had scarcely cleared the pavement of the town before my worthy old friend began the second part of his story.

"It is a dangerous thing, my good lady," he said, "to set a man of seventy to talk of himself and his family, and I am almost ashamed to intrude so much on the patience of my auditors; nevertheless, as you have heard the former part of my story, I would not deprive you of the latter, which will, I trust, prove to be the most agreeable; for he must be accounted but a poor narrator who does not keep some of his best things for the latter end of his tale.

"The last I told you of myself was this, that having rendered my mansion at Plus Caervon too hot to hold me, notwithstanding the snows of the mountains with which it is surrounded, I made the best of my way, with my wife and daughters, to Paris, where we took a house and remained from month to month, constantly talking

of going home, and as constantly putting off the evil day. Well, and we had cut off the way of doing more mischief at home, and however bent we then were upon folly, being lost in a crowd of (I was about to say) fools like ourselves, our influence at any rate was less, and, in consequence, when we arrived at the season of reflection, we had less to answer for.

"In the meantime, the agent whom I had left at home applied the rod which I had put into his hand to make my tenants and dependants look about them, fearing no censures from me on the head of severity, for I was thoroughly soured and irritated; and there is, perhaps, no character, among the multifarious shades of human character, more revengeful and tyrannical than a disappointed liberalist. At this time, also, the cheese fell from the mouth of the old crow in the tree into that of the young fox below, or, to use more courteous language, the old rector dying, his son was permitted by me to step into his place, with this stipulation, that he was to bestow upon my son such learning as lay within his grasp, and to begin his labours as a tutor as soon as the child could be supposed to be capable of literary instruction. My younger children were left, as I before said, in the mansion, under the superintendence of my agent's wife, and the care of an old female servant who had nursed Mrs. Gwynne, and who possessed the advantage of speaking the Welsh as well as the English language.

"I had left home more than a year, when, one fine summer evening (to repeat the story as I have often heard it told), the nurse and the children had strolled through the pleasure-grounds into the churchyard, which is just without the enclosure, and had there seated themselves on a tombstone, while the old woman pointed out the grave of a little girl who had been buried only a few days before, and which, according to our pretty village rite, was scattered over with garlands of fresh flowers.

"The attention of my son being directed to the grave, it seems that he began to ask the nurse many questions respecting it, as, why those flowers were put there, and why they laid the little girl in that place, for he remembered to have seen her a very little time before; with other such inquiries as are suggested by the youthful