"The most remarkable impression of religion which I remember in all this period, was in a place where it might have been least expected. No other than the Italian Opera at Paris. I passed through that city, as I have said before, in my last journey to Lausanne, and on my return a month later. Both times I went to see the opera of _Don Giovanni_, which was the piece then in course of representation. I conceived that after this journey I should give up all thoughts of worldly vices. I was likely to be fixed at home till the time of my ordination, and should assume something of the character of a candidate for holy orders. In short, I felt as if it was almost my last occasion, and I was entertaining, alas! some wicked devices in my mind when I went to this most dangerous and fascinating opera, which is in itself, by the subjects it represents, one of the most calculated to beguile a weak soul to its destruction. But the last scene of it represents Don Giovanni, the hero of the piece, seized in the midst of his licentious career by a troop of devils, and hurried down to hell. As I saw this scene, I was terrified at my own state. I knew that God, who knew what was within me, must look on me as one in the same class with such as Don Giovanni, and for once this holy fear of God's judgment saved me: and this holy warning I was to find in an opera-house at Paris." {91} CHAPTER XII. An Interval Of Rest And Preparation For Orders. This chapter begins with his twenty-first birthday. He comes before us, a fine young man nearly six feet high, graceful and handsome, of independent mien, winning manners, and all the other attributes of gentlemanly perfection that are calculated to make him an object of attraction. His journal, even then, tends to show his worst side; we find self-accusations in every page, and the round of enjoyments broken in upon by serious correctives. For the great problem which moralists solve so easily, and those whom the solution concerns keep away from consideration, we will find in his life a golden key. It is too soon yet to speak about the special workings of Divine Grace in his soul; but, even so far off, we can find glimmerings of the glorious sun of his after-life. Let us look into the world, we find thousands that really enjoy and luxuriate in gay parties, balls, pastimes, and pleasures, without a pang of remorse, and others with sensibilities as keen, if not keener, for the relish of these luxuries, plunging into them with a kind of intoxicating gusto, and coming out fagged and disgusted, when they were perhaps thought the very soul and life of the company. We are told of a patient dying of melancholy who called in a doctor to prescribe for him; the prescription of the medical man was, that he should go and hear Mr. N., a celebrated comic actor, for a number of nights successively, and the remedy was guaranteed to prove infallible, for no one could listen