after, a party of government officers visited the prisonyard, touched the corpse with their feet, without raising it, and, apparently satisfied, turned away, as though it had been a dead dog, that they cared not to give further attention.

Is it strange that, if one were there, with a human heart within him, not brutalized by crime or steeled by passive familiarity with suffering, he should have dragged his heavy chain to the side of the dead, and dropped upon his sharpened, distorted features the tear, which there was none who had loved him to shed? Is it strange that tender fingers should have closed the staring eyes, and touched gently the cold brow, which throbbed no longer with pain, and smoothed the frayed hair, and composed the passive limbs decently, though he knew that the next moment rude hands would destroy the result of his pious labor? And is it strange that when all which remained of the poor sufferer had been jostled into its sackcloth shroud, and crammed down into the dark hole dug for it in the earth, a prayer should have ascended, even from that terrible prison? Not a prayer for the dead; he had received his doom. But an earnest, beseeching upheaving of the heart, for those wretched beings that, in the face of the pure heavens and the smiling earth, confound, by the inherent blackness of their natures, philosopher, priest, or philanthropist, who dares to tickle the ears of the multitude with fair theories of "Natural religion," and "The dignity of human nature."

ORE than forty years ago an English philosopher, whose works have since been read and

admired by all Europe, resided at a little town in France. Some disappointments in his native country had first driven him abroad, and he was afterward induced to remain there from having found, in this retreat, where the connections even of nation and language were avoided, a perfect seclusion and retirement highly favorable to the development of abstract subjects, in which he excelled all the writers of his time.

Perhaps, in the structure of such a mind as Mr.

the finer and more delicate sensibilities are seldom known to have place, or, if originally implanted there, are in a great measure extinguished by the exertions of intense study and profound investigation. Hence the idea of philosophy and unfeelingness being united has become proverbial, and, in common language, the former word is often used to express the latter. Our philosopher had been censured by some as deficient in warmth and feeling; but the mildness of his manners has been allowed

by all, and it is certain that, if he was not easily melted into compassion, it was at least not difficult to awaken his benevolence.

One morning, while he sat busied in those speculations which afterward astonished the world, an old female domestic, who served him for a housekeeper, brought him word that an elderly gentleman and his daughter had arrived in the village the preceding evening, on their way to some distant country, and that the father had been suddenly seized in the night with a dangerous disorder, which the people of the inn where they lodged feared would prove mortal; that she had been sent for, as having some knowledge of medicine, the village surgeon being then absent; and that it was truly piteous to see the good old man, who seemed not so much afflicted by his own distress as by that which it caused to his daughter. Her master laid aside the volume in his hand, and broke off the chain of ideas it had inspired. His nightgown was exchanged for a coat, and he followed his gouvernante to the sick man's apartment.

It was the best in the inn where they lay, but a paltry one notwithstanding. Mr. was obliged to stoop as he entered it. It was floored with earth, and above were the joists not plastered, and hung with cobwebs. On a flock-bed, at one end, lay the old man he came to visit; at the foot of it sat his daughter. She was dressed in a clean white bedgown; her dark locks hung loosely over it as she bent forward, watching the languid looks of her father. Mr. and his housekeeper had stood some moments in the room without the young lady's being sensible of their entering it.

"Mademoiselle!" said the old woman at last, in a

soft tone.

She turned and showed one of the finest faces in the world. It was touched, not spoiled, with sorrow; and when she perceived a stranger, whom the old woman now introduced to her, a blush at first, and then the gentle ceremonial of native politeness, which the afiliction of the time tempered but did not extinguish, crossed it for a moment and changed its expression. It was sweetness all, however, and our philosopher felt it strongly. It was not a time for words; he offered his services in a few sincere ones.

"Monsieur lies miserably ill here," said the gouvernante; "if he could possibly be moved anywhere."

"If he could be moved to our house," said her master. He had a spare bed for a friend, and there was a garret room unoccupied, next to the gouvernante's.

It was contrived accordingly. The scruples of the stranger, who could look scruples though he could not speak them, were overcome, and the bashful reluctance of his daughter gave way to her belief of its use to her father. The sick man was wrapped in blankets, and carried across the street to the English gentleman's. The old woman helped his daughter to nurse him there. The surgeon, who arrived soon after, prescribed a little, and nature did much for him; in a week he was able to thank his benefactor.

By that time his host had learned the name and character of his guest. He was a Protestant clergyman of Switzerland, called La Roche, a widower, who had lately buried his wife, after a long and lingering illness, for

which travelling had been prescribed, and was now returning home, after an ineffectual and melancholy journey, with his only child, the daughter we have mentioned.

He was a devout man, as became his profession. He possessed devotion in all its warmth, but with none of its asperity, I mean that asperity which men, called devout, sometimes indulge in.

,

Mr. though he felt no devotion, never quarrelled with it in others. His gouvernante joined the old man and his daughter in the prayers and thanksgivings which they put up on his recovery; for she too was a heretic, in the phrase of the village. The philosopher walked out, with his long staff and his dog, and left them to their prayers and thanksgivings.

"My master," said the old woman, "alas! he is not a Christian; but he is the best of unbelievers."

"Not a Christian!" exclaimed Mademoiselle La Roche, "yet he saved my father! Heaven bless him for it! I would he were a Christian."

"There is a pride in human knowledge, my child,” said her father, "which often blinds men to the sublime truths of revelation; hence opposers of Christianity are found among men of virtuous lives, as well as among those of dissipated and licentious characters. Nay, sometimes I have known the latter more easily converted to the true faith than the former, because the fume of passion is more easily dissipated than the mist of false theory and delusive speculation."

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"But Mr. ——," said his daughter, "alas! my father, he shall be a Christian before he dies." She was inter