Thus the pomp and magnificence with which the sun is worshipped in Syria, said he, and the human victims sacrificed to him, seem altogether to mark an awful reverence, paid rather to his power than to his beneficence, in a country where the violence of his heat is destructive to vegetation, as it is in many other respects very troublesome to the inhabitants. Superstition, since the world began, has consisted of every particular, which either people's _fears_ or their _follies_, either the _strength_ of their _imagination_, or the _weakness_ of their _judgment_, or the _design_ and _artifice_ of their _leaders_, taught them to _embrace_, in order to please any being, or order of beings, superior to themselves, whom they made the objects of their religious regards. My mother answered, that the unbeliever changes nothing of the design of God, when he dares to rise up against him--He ever enters into his plan, where the evil concurs with the good, for the harmony of _this_ world, and the good of the _next_. I need not, my lords, tire you with an account of these particulars, further than to mark the difference of my parents characters--these arguments recurring often, in the end produced such contentions, that it impaired my mother's health--she died, and left me under the guidance of a father, _totally unfit_ for that _important trust_ He endeavoured to impress me with his sentiments of religion, etc. If I imbibed his ideas, could I be blamed for it? Is it not injurious and ridiculous to censure others for thinking in the same manner we ourselves should have done under the same circumstances? For if we do not consult our reason (which in matters of religion is prohibited us) the capacity and credulity of individuals are different, in consequence of their diversity of temperament, education, and experience. And it would be still more absurd to reprobate the rest of mankind, for not believing what we ourselves do _not_, nor can be made _to believe_. But to return to my father: About a year after my mother's death, when I was only eight years old, he set out for Italy, and returned home inebriated with a love for antiquity--He could sit all day in contemplation of a statue without a nose, and doated on the decays with greater love than the self-loved Narcissus did on his beauty. Sir Harry Bingley did me the honor to address me; but my father, on his first proposal, would not hear of it; he wished me to marry a brother antiquarian, who was desirous, among other pieces of age and time, to have one young face be seen to call him father. My lover told him, he would pray to Heaven to have merit or deserve me--He returned, "When your prayer is answered, renew your suit; but if you stay till then, you must have spectacles to see her beauty with." Had Sir Harry appeared to him like a Sibyl's son, or with a face rugged as father Nilus is pictured on the hangings, it