In old times it would probably have been called, what it literally was, that of domestic chaplain: and the dignity of the name, the defined office, and the authority in the household which it implies, would not have been without their use--but, in spite of the want of these advantages, Mr. St. Leger managed to perform the duties, which, in his opinion, attached to the office, to the satisfaction of every one. It had not been without considerable difficulty and hesitation that he had persuaded himself to enter into the plan. He had scruples, as we have seen; and he had, moreover, an almost invincible dislike to any thing approaching to family dependence. The extremity of his circumstances, however, made him, upon a little consideration, feel that the indulgence of these latter mentioned feelings of pride and delicacy, was not only unreasonable but almost positively wrong. And, as for the scruples connected with his profession, Edgar did not find it difficult to dissipate them. He set forth, what was in truth the present state of the family at the Hazels, and enlarged upon the very great need there was for the introduction of more religious views than now prevailed. According to a fashion almost universally prevalent when General Melwyn was young, except with those of professed religious habits, and who were universally stigmatized as Methodists, family prayer had been utterly neglected in his family. And, notwithstanding the better discipline maintained since the evil star of Randall had sunk beneath the horizon, not the slightest approach to regularity, in this respect, had been as yet made. Mrs. Melwyn was personally pious, though in a timid and unconfiding way, her religion doing little to support and strengthen her mind; but the general, though he did not live, as many of his generation were doing, in the open profession of skepticism, and that contempt for the Bible, which people brought up when Tom Paine passed for a great genius, used to reckon so clever, yet it was but too probable that he never approached his Creator, in the course of the twenty-four hours, in any way; nor had he done so, since he was a child at his mother's knee.