"By thine agony and bloody sweat; by thy cross and passion; by thy precious death and burial; by thy glorious resurrection and ascension; and by the coming of the Holy Ghost; good Lord, deliver us."

Having thus fulfilled my promise of relating the simple story told by the venerable clergyman, I shall resume the account of myself in a new chapter.

CHAP. XV.

AN ALMOST INCURABLE MAN

RESTORED

WITHOUT SENDING HIM TO A MADHOUSE.

I TRUST the reader has not so far lost the thread of my history as to forget that he left me retiring to bed after my walk and conversation with the old clergyman. I slept quietly, and rose in better temper than usual. But I could by no means cease to look with suspicion on my aunt's conduct; and, more especially, I felt disposed to complain of her long and frequent interviews with the lawyer, mentioned above. Nor did the day produce any event calculated to allay my anger: on the contrary, several circumstances contributed to sharpen the edge of my resentment. In the first place,

I found that my aunt had, without the smallest communication with me, summoned a general meeting of the tenantry of the estate-to whom, I felt no doubt, she designed to expose my recent disappointment, and her own triumph. Secondly, and this I took exceedingly ill, considering my known hostility to the education of the poor, it appeared that she had ordered the first stone to be laid of a new parish-school. Thirdly, I discovered that she had determined to enlarge the alms-house, which I always, though in opposition I will own to general opinion, considered as an eye-sore from the dining-room window. Fourthly, I caught the gardener, acting under my aunt's express authority, in the very act of cutting down a branch of a fine oak in the park, in order to let in a view of the spire of the village church. Fifthly, I collected from my own servant, who, with the clothes, professed to adopt the opinions of his master, that my aunt had been busily en

gaged with the old clergyman in ferreting out from the library every free-thinking book; had actually conveyed them into an out-house; had deposited them carefully upon two or three bundles of faggots; and was probably on the eve of consigning them to the same fate with the books of magic in the first ages of Christianity. Sixthly, and lastly, I found that, while I had been walking out, my aunt had herself entered the study, and, with a hammer and an infinity of nails, had fastened up her own picture in such a manner as to be absolutely immovable, in the very spot from which I had taken it down. This last measure was perfectly intolerable. Was I not merely to bear the occasional burthen of her bodily presence, but to have her image pursuing me even into my retirement; haunting me, like a spectre, by night and by day? "Is this," said I," her "charity? Can the old clergyman justify this? "Would he not have been better employed in

"checking this spirit of insult and despotism, "than in carrying, as I see him at this moment, "those noble volumes of Hobbes, and Chubb, "and Collins, to their funeral pile?" It was not that I had not begun to detest these volumes myself: still, in the present state of my mind, I regarded each of these unhappy authors as little short of martyrs to feminine intrigue and priestly bigotry, and could have almost drawn a sword, if I had worn one, in defence of those dishonoured volumes.

In this state of agitation I passed the day; slept ill, and rose late. At ten o'clock, however, I was surprised by a summons from my aunt, begging me to attend her in the library. After some hesitation, as it seemed to promise me an opportunity of protesting against these tyrannical proceedings, I determined to clothe myself in appropriate thunders, and to obey her summons. I accordingly descended, opened the door with much diguity, and found my aunt