"You are a young man," answered he mildly, "and this delicacy and these prejudices would soon wear off if you were to live some time in the world." "My dear Sir John," said I, warmly, "by the grace of God, I never _will_ live in the world; at least, I never will associate with that part of it whose society would be sure to wear off that delicacy and remove those prejudices. Why this is retaining all the worst part of popery. Here is the abstinence without the devotion; the outward observance without the interior humiliation; the suspending of sin, not only without any design of forsaking it, but with a fixed resolution of returning to it, and of increasing the gust by the forbearance. Nay, the sins she retains in order to mitigate the horrors of forbearance, are as bad as those she lays down. A postponed sin, which is fully intended to be resumed, is as much worse than a sin persisted in, as deliberate hypocrisy is worse than the impulse of passion. I desire not a more explicit comment on a text which I was once almost tempted to think unjust; I mean, the greater facility of the entrance of gross and notorious offenders into heaven than of these formalists. No! If Miss Denham were sole heiress to Cr[oe]sus, and joined the beauty of Cleopatra to the wit of Sappho, I never would connect myself with a disciple of that school." "How many ways there are of being unhappy!" said Sir John, as we returned one day from a ride we had taken some miles out of town, to call on a friend of his. "Mr. Stanhope, whom we have just quitted, is a man of great elegance of mind. His early life was passed in liberal studies, and in the best company. But his fair prospects were blasted by a disproportionate marriage. He was drawn in by a vanity too natural to young men, that of fancying himself preferred by a woman who had no one recommendation but beauty. To be admired by her whom all his acquaintance admired, gratified his _amour propre_. He was overcome by her marked attentions so far as to declare himself, without knowing her real disposition. It was some time before his prepossession allowed him to discover that she was weak and ill-informed, selfish and bad-tempered. What she wanted in understanding, she made up in spirit. The more she exacted, the more he submitted; and her demands grew in proportion to his sacrifices. My friend, with patient affection, struggled for a long time to raise her character, and to enlighten her mind; but finding that she pouted whenever he took up a book, and that she even hid the newspaper before he had read it, complaining that he preferred any thing to her company; the softness of his temper and his habitual indolence at length prevailed. His better judgment sunk in the hopeless contest. For a quiet life, he has submitted to a disgraceful life. The compromise has not answered. He has incurred the degradation which, by a more spirited conduct, he might have avoided, and has missed