Mrs. Middleton's going to hell, for he would destroy all his influence with the congregation.

He seemed to appreciate this frank kindness, and from thenceforth began to ask her opinions of every member of his congregation; which she gave truly, from no motive save the belief that, by knowing the peculiarities of each one, he would be better enabled to do them good; for she felt no dislike or enmity to a human being herself, though from girlhood she had had the eyes of Argus, and a habit of generalizing character, from every fact that came under her moral observation. Mr. Lauderdale seemed never happy, finally, out of Musidora's presence. He would visit her, on some pretence, three times a day, to the great amusement of her brothers. Indeed, he was a man to be pitied; for his health was very bad, and he lived entirely alone, with the exception of one old black servant-woman. Even Mrs. Wyndham was stimulated to tell him to come to her house to dine, as he said his cooking at home was so wretched that it almost killed him. So that a plate and chair were reserved for him every day at Mrs. Wyndham's dinner-table.

Musidora had horses, and a carriage, and a coachman of her own, that she kept to visit the poor for ten or twenty miles around. Mr. Lauderdale used this conveyance whenever he chose, for he had no horses himself; and, indeed, he became so entirely a member of the family, that all the household expressed their opinions and feelings before him, as if he was their brother.

He would write to Musidora three or four times a day about all his parochial hopes or difficulties; and,

indeed, when she drove out in the morning to spend the day among the poor, she would find he had been running to the public road to watch for her return, almost like a sick child. "Love never fails to master what he finds."

"Love seizes on us suddenly, without giving warning, and our disposition or weakness favors the surprise: one look, one glance, from the fair, fixes and determines us. Friendship, on the contrary, is a long time in forming; it is of slow growth, through many trials and months of familiarity."

Did not, the question may be asked, did not Musidora know that this man was desperately in love with her, though engaged to be married to another lady in England? No, she did not; for it must be borne in mind that she was a simple village Christian had spent all her early girlhood in roaming through the woods, and had had no mother to teach her anything. She had joined the church at the age of sixteen, and had read no novels; or else these would have given her some insight into the character of man. She had loved Mr. Fletcher with the most enthusiastic devotion; but the affection of a young girl for her first lover is as pure and innocent as an angel's. All her contemplations since his death had been sanctified by sorrow; and the thought of loving the unmanly, cold-hearted, unsentimental, ambiguous, abolition adventurer, Mr. Lauderdale, would have seemed an outrage upon her romance for the memory of her splendidly dignified, deceased lover. And not only so- her pure, religious mind regarded this minister as already married in the sight of God; and when he wrote her those despairing

but non-committal letters, she would reply by pointing him to the consolations of the gospel to the afflicted from any cause.

One day, he began to talk to her about feeling so hopeless that he was tempted to commit suicide. Musidora looked straight at him; and his eye, blazing with passion, convinced her at last that he was madly in love with her.

"So love does raine

In stoutest minds, and make its monstrous warre:
He maketh warre, he maketh peace againe,
And yett his peace is but continuall jarre:
Oh miserable men that to him subject are!"

"What warre so cruel, or what siege so sore,
As that which strong affections do apply
Against the forte of reason evermore,
To bring the soul into captivity?
Their force is fiercer through infirmity
Of the fraile flesh, relenting to their rage,
And exercise most bitter tyranny."

"Mr. Lauderdale," said Musidora, solemnly and conscientiously, "never, so long as you live, talk to me in this strain again." And from that moment she could not restrain a feeling of disgust for his dishonesty to the woman to whom he was betrothed; so that her intimacy with this nondescript lover now began to wane from day to day. Indeed, she pitied from her very heart the woman who was destined to be his wife; who, if she had not touched his heart previous to his intention of leading her to the altar, "had scarcely a chance to charm it when possession and security turn their powerful arms against her."

Mr. Lauderdale was a man of great passion, but no heart; and as he possessed no adhesiveness, he could have passionately loved any woman with whom he was intimately acquainted; but if she returned his affeetion, he at once ceased to care for her. It seemed to be the pursuit, rather than the possession, that stimulated his enterprise; and there is no doubt that his frantic love for Musidora, was daily increased by the impossibility of getting her. Besides, all the congregation knew of his engagement to Miss Lillibridge, of England. These obstacles only made him more unreasonable in his affections, so that Musidora finally regarded him with prayerful pity, as no sensitive woman perhaps ever felt hatred for a man of genius who idolized her.

"The intelligence of affection is carried on by the eye only; good-breeding has made the tongue falsify the heart, and act a part of continual restraint, while nature has preserved the eyes to herself, that she may not be disguised, or misrepresented."... "To be in love, and at the same time to act wisely, is scarcely within the power of God."... "Oh, love, when thou gettest dominion over us, we may bid good-bye to prudence."

Perhaps a more intensely wretched man than Mr. Lauderdale, never lived; for he not only knew that Musidora never for a moment returned his affections, but his pride now began to scorch with fury, for all his parish knew how unprincipled his conduct had been to the woman to whom he was betrothed; and what was more terrible still, the whole year had passed, and the fixed time had arrived for him to fulfil his matrimonial

engagement in England. We always dread the sight of the person we love, when we have been coquetting elsewhere. But Mr. Lauderdale had not the moral candor, or boldness, to write how he now felt, to the woman he had wronged; and he feared the criticism of society too much to let his actions correspond to the deepest emotions of his soul.

"Fools not to know that love endures no tie,

And Jove but laughs at lovers' perjury."

Musidora had had any number of clerical beaux, and often wondered at the arts they resorted to, to conceal their courtships; for surely affection for a charming woman is a perfectly orthodox alterative in a minister's life of severe, ghostly enterprise; and therefore they should not make love to a lady, as if they were ashamed of this natural impulse: or, as if they conferred everlasting obligation on the fair sex, in noticing them at all; whereas the fact is, no man on earth is so profoundly ignorant of the sinuosities of a woman's heart, as a clergyman; and no man is more easily captivated by a dimple, or a curl, for his mind is not diverted by hard friction with worldly business, that other men engage in every day; and moreover, this enterprise of courtship is the only recreation or amusement that conventionality thinks orthodox to his sacred vocation.

There is nothing that proves so conclusively how women worship moral worth, as the universal ease with which a minister can select whichever one he pleases among the girls, or widows, or old maids, of his congregation, and marry her. Not because he is handsome, or aris