persecuting the servants of God, and compelling them to blaspheme. But grace had then only selected him as an object of mercy through Christ; he had not yet been called, pardoned, justified, adopted, or sanctified: therefore no man in his senses would at that time have called him a chosen vessel of mercy. Works are then to be considered as the only proper evidences of the call of an individual; for the tree is known by its fruits. "But," proceeded the lady of the manor, " inasmuch as I have detained your attention for a long time on a very serious subject, I shall now endeavour to entertain you with a little narrative which is not altogether irrelevant to the points in question." The lady of the manor then unfolding a little manuscript, read as follows. The History of Mrs. Howard; related by herself. “ "I shall not begin my history, as is commonly done, with an apology for intruding the affairs of a private person on the attention of the public; because I wish it to be understood, that my object in troubling the world with my concerns is the desire of rendering myself useful to such persons as may labour under the same illusions as I did during the greater part of a long life. "I am the daughter of a dignified clergyman of the Church of England, and was married early in life to an elderly gentleman of the name of Howard, a person of considerable property. While yet under thirty, I was left a widow with one daughter, who was heiress of her father's large property, subject to no other incumbrance than my jointure, which was, to be sure, an exceedingly handsome one, though not unsuitable to the family cir cumstances. "It may be supposed, that a young widow in such a situation, and one who was not disagreeable in her person, should have many temptations to enter a second time into matrimony. But having conceived a dishonourable idea of second marriages, I adhered to the resolution I had formed during the first weeks of my widowhood of never marrying again. No one certainly could blame me for this decision. I was at liberty to do as I chose; and had I chosen to do otherwise, I should not have done amiss, if my choice of a second husband had fallen upon a worthy person. But be this as it may, I remember that I built much in my own favour upon the resolution which I had taken and so scrupulously adhered to, laying this as a kind of foundation of the character which I afterward chose to appropriate to myself, viz. that of a woman of strict piety and exalted morals. "I now proceed to state precisely what my ideas of piety then were. They consisted in a close compliance with all the appointed forms of the Church of England. Of its doctrines I say nothing, because I did not at that time comprehend them; but I held a kind of confused opinion that I was to do what was right as far as I could, and trust to Christ to make up my short-comings. I entertained no suspicion whatever that any distinction was to be made between the commands delivered in the Word of God and ordinances of man: and in consequence, the opinions of any man of rank in my own Church, had as much weight with me as the words of the Bible. For though I often heard and read the words of Scripture, I heard and read them entirely as matters of course, constantly interpreting them to my own fancy, and agreeably to certain preconceived notions; without ever seriously reflecting upon them, or employing my understanding in ascertaining their real import. I was, in fact, though a member of one of the purest establishments upon earth, little less than a downright Papist, submitting my will to human rather than divine authority so that the Bible was, in fact, almost as entirely a sealed book to me, as it is to the man who never hears it read in a known language. : "Neither was I any better informed respecting the spiritual meaning of the Liturgy of our Church. I had not the smallest conception that it had been prepared for a description of persons with whom I had at that time not one feeling in common; and, in consequence, I applied without reserve all the passages which are there put in the mouth of the broken-hearted sinner, or the regenerated and sanctified person, to my own peculiar case, although I scarcely had ever heard of convic tion of sin, and should not have scrupled to assert that regeneration and sanctification were words without meaning, or merely the invention of fanaticism. Thus, although my case was not quite so singular a one, it in some respects resembled that of the Oxford scholar who is said to have appropriated to himself the honours intended for the heir-apparent of the crown, in whose train he once happened to enter the theatre. But religious appropriations of this kind are, I fear, too common, and are no doubt made by all those persons who cannot distinguish between the visible and invisible Church, not understanding that multitudes perpetually creep into the former who have no place in the latter, and that, notwithstanding the utmost efforts of pious ministers to separate the tares from the wheat, they will be found growing together until the harvest. "I am, however, anxious, from my own experience, to give others a clue to the intricate and dark corners of their own hearts, that I may thereby induce them, with the divine blessing, to inquire seriously within whether they are truly entitled, as feeling their own utter depravity and helplessness, to adopt the language of the liturgy, and to appropriate to themselves the various consolatory expressions it holds out to those who have been brought to see their need of a Saviour. But to leave these matters for the present, and proceed with my narrative. "After my husband's death, I settled in one of his country-houses, which, with an estate surrounding it, was part of my jointure, and there I resided till my daughter was of age to be introduced into the world. This house had been built about the time of King William, when the Dutch taste prevailed. It was a square building; the front opening upon a garden laid out in the same style with the house, into which there was a descent by high flights of steps. In this garden every thing was uniform, grove nodding at grove, and every alley being provided with a brother. Here I had a favourite room, opening with folding-doors into the garden, from whence I had a view of two square pools, or tanks, one beyond the other, flanked on each side by groves of Linden trees, through which avenues were cut |