“It may,” replied Mrs. Villars; “but it is not wishes alone which can improve us in anything. Turn the same exertion and perseverance which have won you the prize to-day to this object, and you will meet with the same success; perhaps not on the first, the second, or the third attempt; but depend upon it that you will at last. Every new effort will weaken your bad habits, and strengthen your good ones. But you must not expect to succeed all at once. I repeat it to you, for habit must be counteracted by habit. It would be as extravagant in us to expect that all our faults could be destroyed by one punishment, were it ever so severe, as it was in the Roman emperor we were reading of a few days ago, to wish that all the heads of his enemies were upon one neck, that he might cut them off at one blow.” Here Mrs. Villars took Cecilia by the hand, and they began to walk home. Such was the nature of Cecilia’s mind, that when any object was forcibly impressed on her imagination, it caused a temporary suspension of her reasoning faculties. Hope was too strong a stimulus for her spirits; and when fear did take possession of her mind, it was attended with total debility. Her vanity was now as much mortified as in the morning it had been elated. She walked on with Mrs. Villars in silence, until they came under the shade of the elm-tree walk, and there, fixing her eyes upon Mrs. Villars, she stopped short. “Do you think, madam,” said she, with hesitation—“do you think, madam, that I have a bad heart?” “A bad heart,—my dear! why, what put that into your head?” “Leonora said that I had, madam, and I felt ashamed when she said so.” “But, my dear, how can Leonora tell whether your heart be good or bad? However, in the first place, tell me what you mean by a bad heart.” “Indeed I do not know what is meant by it, madam; but it is something which everybody hates.” “And why do they hate it?” “Because they think that it will hurt them, ma’am, I believe: and that those who have bad hearts take delight in doing mischief; and that they never do anybody any good but for their own ends.” “Then the best definition,” said Mrs. Villars, “which you can give me of a bad heart is, that it is some constant propensity to hurt others, and to do wrong for the sake of doing wrong.” “Yes, madam; but that is not all either. There is still something else meant; something which I cannot express—which, indeed, I never distinctly understood; but of which, therefore, I was the more afraid.”