Mrs. Heritage, deeply grieved at such notions in a man otherwise excellent and so agreeable, had felt herself drawn to meet him, and reason with him on this head. Admitting that the infinite must be incomprehensible to the finite, she asked him if he could understand his own existence? Yet he did exist, and so did God. Had no such scheme as this earth, and of human beings living in so complicated a machine of flesh, blood, nerves, and their sensations, supported by vegetables converted by digestive process into this flesh and blood; of the growth of all animals, and of man himself; of all vegetables, of the mightiest trees, with all their varied and delicious fruits and essences—not been exhibited to intellectual beings capable of observing it, she urged that such beings could by no possibility have conceived the idea of so marvellous a creation. Sir Emanuel admitted the force of her arguments, and thanked her most warmly for presenting them to his mind, but he could by no means bring himself to believe, amidst the myriads of worlds which the telescope revealed to the eye—far as its powers could open up the inconceivable distances of the heavens—that God could condescend to come down to this one little planet, and take upon himself the weaknesses and inconveniences of humanity, and be insulted and killed by his own creatures. It revolted, he said, the totality of his reason. Mrs. Heritage reminded him that he had just admitted that everything around him was beyond the grasp of reason, and he ought to content himself with the unquestionable facts of a thoroughly authenticated history. Sir Emanuel smiled, and said that he must think of that part of the subject, and concluded the conversation by thanking Mrs. Heritage, and asking her to go and look at some American deer that he had just received from the United States. Mrs. Heritage often afterwards renewed the conversation with Sir Emanuel, and he had always received her remarks in the kindest and most courteous manner, but remained apparently as fixed in his old views as ever. In these views Henry Clavering, his only son, had grown up. They had never been expressly taught him by his father, but he had listened to conversations on these topics so often, and had such respect for the talents and honourable nature of his father, whilst his mother had been lost to him when very young, that these ideas were to him as part of his mental constitution.