The intimacy which subsisted between Emma Holmes and her young friend Miss Orme proved essentially injurious to the moral tone and feelings of her mind; and eventually brought on the family a series of trials which overwhelmed them in the deepest sorrow. This intimacy commenced at school, just as her character began to receive its complexion and its tendencies; and when she stood most in need of those checks and restraints, and that salutary advice, which she would have received, if her companion had been imbued with the grace of pure religion. From the cast of her mind, which bore no resemblance to that of either of her sisters, she imbibed, at an early age, strong prejudices against evangelical piety; and though at one period she felt the reproaches of an evil conscience, and the terrors of the law falling upon her, yet she soon cast them off, and became still more volatile and gay. The inconsistent conduct of some professors was the immediate cause of effacing her deep and solemn impressions of the vanity of the world and the importance of religion; and though she would readily admit that this circumstance was no valid argument against the reality of personal piety, yet she could never conquer that painful aversion which it had excited in her mind against the love of the truth. This strong aversion was strengthened and increased by many accidental circumstances, from which at the time no bad effects were apprehended. Her sister Louisa had established a periodical interchange of visits between her own family and the Corries, and their uncouth phraseology of speech was no less offensive to Emma's taste, than their dogmatic opinions were revolting to her moral feelings. Their intellectual weakness imperceptibly destroyed that reverence for the Christian faith which she had felt, when contemplating it as associated with minds of a higher order, and greater degree of refinement. Their perpetual recurrence to a few favourite opinions--the tenacity with which they held them, even when fairly refuted by sound argument--the self-complacency which they discovered in their assumed superior illumination, after an unsuccessful effort to support the dogmas of their belief--and the sang-froid with which they condemned as unenlightened and unconverted every one who professed sentiments differing from their own--excited in her mind a great dislike to evangelical religion. While these good people required from the chosen few a more entire renunciation of the world than is compatible with its claims on our attention; and while they visited with severe censures the slightest degree of conformity to its style of dress or of living--condemning even a taste for music, poetry, or art, as a proof of a carnal mind; they gave to the unconverted the utmost latitude, and maintained that pious parents should not attempt to impose any restrictions on their children, assigning as a reason that if they were not elected