“You regret, my friend,” said he to Mr. ——, “when my daughter and I talk of the exquisite pleasure derived from music,—you regret your want of musical powers and musical feelings; it is a department of soul, you say, which nature has almost denied you, which, from the effects you see it have on others, you are sure must be highly delightful. Why should not the same thing be said of religion? Trust me, I feel it in the same way,—an energy, an inspiration, which I would not lose for all the blessings of sense, or enjoyments of the world; yet, so far from lessening my relish of the pleasures of life, methinks I feel it heighten them all. The thought of receiving it from God adds the blessing of sentiment to that of sensation in every good thing I possess; and when calamities overtake me,—and I have had my share,—it confers a dignity on my affliction, so lifts me above the world. Man, I know, is but a worm; yet, methinks, I am then allied to God!” It would have been inhuman in our philosopher to have clouded, even with a doubt, the sunshine of this belief. His discourse, indeed, was very remote from metaphysical disquisition or religious controversy. Of all men I ever knew, his ordinary conversation was the least tinctured with pedantry, or liable to dissertation. With La Roche and his daughter, it was perfectly familiar. The country round them, the manners of the villagers, the comparison of both with those of England, remarks on the works of favorite authors, on the sentiments they conveyed and the passions they excited, with many other topics in which there was an equality or alternate advantage among the speakers, were the subjects they talked on. Their hours, too, of riding and walking were many, in which Mr. ——, as a stranger, was shown the remarkable scenes and curiosities of the country. They would sometimes make little expeditions to contemplate, in different attitudes, those astonishing mountains, the cliffs of which, covered with eternal snows, and sometimes shooting into fantastic shapes, form the termination of most of the Swiss prospects. Our philosopher asked many questions as to their natural history and productions. La Roche observed the sublimity of the ideas which the view of their stupendous summits, inaccessible to mortal foot, was calculated to inspire, which naturally, said he, leads the mind to that Being by whom their foundations were laid. “They are not seen in Flanders,” said Mademoiselle with a sigh. “That’s an odd remark,” said Mr. ——, smiling. She blushed, and he inquired no further. It was with regret he left a society in which he found himself so happy; but he settled with La Roche and his daughter a plan of correspondence, and they took his promise that, if ever he came within fifty leagues of their dwelling, he should travel those fifty leagues to visit them.