enter not the hallowed walls of the building sacred to the worship of our God, if you are not determined, with an invincible determination, that you will emulate her virtues. Every step that you can now take will make you acquainted with the extent and the variety of them; and you may expect the mountains by which you are surrounded to fall and cover you, if you profane, by the factitious morals of a soft and delicate religion, those haunts which have been marked in all their windings by the genuine and vigorous exertions of a self-denying holiness. She whom you follow was happier than you, but it is not therefore necessary that she should be better. That which she learned and practised in all the blessedness of a loved companionship, you must study and acquire in solitude. She was tasked to hold herself ready to resign at a moment's warning the

consummation of all human good. You are to consider the evils of life as dust upon the balance in comparison of all earthly bliss. The stores of the best learning are now within your reach. Every book that you can open will bear marks that it has not been read in vain by those who have gone before you. Read your Bible: not as you have hitherto read it, as an historical or as a geographical study, but as the rule of life; and deviate not from that rule, either into the labyrinth of sentiment or the ratiocination of sophistry. You will receive this letter in the library; in that library where the voice of wis dom was never heard in vain. Raise your eyes to its shelves, and see there the resource that the munificence of your husband's ancestors has provided for the tedium of life, which that husband has imposed upon you. Read for the purpose of knowledge; not for

the idle occupation of a heavy hour. The elements of all common information have been given you. They will now enable you to make the next step, which you have never yet made, and to apply them to use. Remember, that if you quit Eagle's Crag neither wiser nor better than you entered it, that you will have incurred a responsibility that you will find it difficult to discharge. I might talk to you in a softer tone. I might tell you of your hardships, of your merits, of beauty and youth buried in barren solitudes. I disdain to do it! I rejoice that you are entered upon a warfare where, if you come off victor, the palm you bear will be amaranthine! - Do I love you less? - God knoweth!-My beloved child, the almost only object that remains to me on earth, that I can, that I dare love, disappoint not my hopes, blast not your own immortal

joys; think more of what you are called upon to perform, than what you may have to suffer. And the arms of God's mercy mercy be around you!"

How did Isabella's heart glow within her as she read this vehement exhortation from Lady Rachel!-how did she raise her imagination to the highest pitch of human excellence! how little appeared the cares, the mortifications which had but the moment before disturbed her! she was exalted in her own estimation by the part that was given her to act; and she felt that she could never again be the child, the wavering doubting creature that she had been. She wondered that she should never have heard of such things before, and she resolved that her boy should suck them in with his very milk.

END OF VOL. I.

LONDON:

PRINTED BY J. NICHOLS AND SON, 25, PARLIAMENT-STREET.