"It is easy to understand," answered the old man, "how lively minds in these troublous times forsake their party and seek on the opposite side, what is wanting to them; that love makes such attempts to become reconciled with itself, even though these attempts should fail. My dear, young friend, you recall to my mind by your confession, your countenance and presence my own past youth in the most lively colours, and I cannot refrain from exchanging confession for confession, confidence for confidence. I am indeed tempted to impart to you the history of my little limited life, that has almost only experienced emotions of the mind." They seated themselves in an arbour, before which stood plantains entwined with vines, the green wooded mountains were open, and the murmuring of the brook resounded pleasingly through the solitude, while from to time to time, the bells of the village church on account of the festival on the morrow, rang out their monotonous and solemn tones. "I come from the Netherlands," commenced the priest, "born of Huguenot parents, whom I lost at a very early period. My guardians, worldly-minded men, troubled themselves more about the preservation of my small fortune than of giving me a sound education, and therefore it happened that I was consigned to a tutor, with whom they, as well as myself, were very well pleased. He was a man of extensive information, who had also travelled much, and had resided a considerable time in London. As he was descended from a good family, and possessed himself some tact, he became acquainted with and acquired each day the confidence of many beaux esprits and of the courtiers here, and although his morals had not suffered as much as one might well have been led to fear, his religious principles at least, which may never have been very strong, were by this intercourse entirely stifled and destroyed. Knowledge, understanding were the most important to him, however he devoted himself with religious worship to poetry, as well as to the history of the ancient Greeks. No one could be more eloquent than he, when he enlarged upon these subjects. That these sentiments, as I was of a very lively disposition, should influence me, was very natural; my tutor seemed to me the most gifted of mortals, and his decisions were my oracles. Though I may still honour his memory, I must nevertheless censure as a weakness in what then certainly appeared to me his greatest forte, namely, his unwearied mockery of Christianity and of every religion; all others rather than the various sects of the Christian Church, found a release from his satires; the present, as well as the past, the history of the development, its mysteries, all was a subject of his derision, and the apostles, even the Saviour himself, were not spared by him, how much less Luther, or Calvin, and Zwingli, or even those so named mystics, who desire to form in themselves a peculiar spirit to recognise God. My mind had soon become