and ourselves, even of homage and of prayer. Wherefore should the Consequence pray to the Cause? "It is a cruel thought," she added; "for how many blessings, prayers, and tears I should have poured out at His feet since I have loved you! But," she resumed, "I surprise and pain you; pray forgive me. Is not truth the first of virtues, if virtue there be? On this single point we cannot agree; let us never speak of it. You have been brought up by a pious mother, in the midst of a Christian family, and have inhaled with your first breath the holy credulity of your home. You have been led by the hand into the temples; you have been shown images, mysteries, and altars; you have been taught prayers and told, God is here, who listens and will answer you; and you believed, for you were not of an age to inquire. Since then, you have discarded these baubles of your childhood, to conceive a less feminine and less puerile God, than this God of the Christian tabernacles; but the first dazzling glare has not departed from your eyes; the real light that you have thought to see has been blended, unknown to yourself, with that false brightness which fascinated you on your entrance into life; you have retained two weaknesses of intelligence,--mystery and prayer. There is no mystery" she said, in a more solemn tone; "there is only reason, which dispels all mystery! It is man, crafty or credulous man, who invented mystery,--God made reason! And prayer does not exist," she continued mournfully, "for an inflexible law will not relent, and a necessary law cannot be changed. "The ancients, with that profound wisdom which was often hidden beneath their popular ignorance, knew that full well," she added; "for they prayed to all the gods of their invention, but they never implored the supreme law,--Destiny."