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retire, to call upon God-retire, to seek the application of the balm of Gilead to your wounded mind-retire, to re-enter the paths you have so long deserted. Nothing less than this, rely upon it, can reconcile you to yourself, or make retirement a blessing to you.

"Oh! my dear Charles, this is a serious crisis to you. You seem to stand on a precipice, and the next step may either recover you to virtue, or fix you in despair! Pray before you think, and think before you resolve. Spared as you are till now--convinced as you must be of the folly and criminality of your course-and solicited as you are by the voice of friendship and religion-ought you not to flee to the only hope that remains to you? Such a period may never occur again. O, by our former friendship-by your present distress-by the possibility of your return to happiness-and by the mercies of God-I earnestly beseech you do not slight it-do not abuse it to a useless melancholy!

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"Painful as are your feelings, I rejoice that you have been disposed to communi

cate them. Still tell me all you think and fear. Be assured, that the utterance of your most uneasy sentiments cannot give me so much pain, as their concealment. My confidence and sympathy are what you once knew them to be. Trust them as they deserve.

"May God Almighty visit you, and save you! May you be restored to the pleasures you have lost, and raised to such as you have not yet participated! Religion can do this.

"Your's most affectionately,

"JAMES DOUGLAS."

This correspondence did not produce the effects that might have been hoped. Lefevre did not embrace Douglas's kind invitations to a renewed and candid intercourse. He had replied so freely to Douglas's first letter, rather to justify himself, than to confess his faults, as he feared Douglas might have been tempted to think him even worse than he was. Douglas gave him credit for a better motive, and was in the issue disappointed.

Nor were the references made to his spiritual condition more successful. Despair had too long possessed him to be easily dismissed; and, it is to be feared, Lefevre rather cherished than resisted it. He had quarrelled with the world, but he did not abhor it. He was vexed with the pains and penalties of sin; but was not prepared to renounce it as a thing wholly hateful. He was not an enemy to hope; but he knew, that in a sinful course, there is much to fear and little to hope; he was, therefore, willing to separate from the one, to be free from the other. He had found, with many others who have been resolved on wickedness, that despair is an opiate to fear; and he trusted, if he could persuade himself that he had no concern in religion, he should be so far justified in neglecting it.

However, the violence of Lefevre's passions was now subsiding, and the thirst of curiosity was satiated. In the fit of disappointment he had determined to retire from the world; and, even in his sober thoughts, he was so convinced of its evils, as to be

willing to forsake its most troublesome and irregular paths. He had experienced that uncontrolled passions are insupportable tyrants, and he was disposed, though not to crucify them, to put them under some restraint. This disposition, though far from pure in its origin, and promising to continue only as a rest to the passions, had already recovered him comparatively to regular and moral habits; and one paragraph in Douglas's correspondence had an insensible tendency to strengthen and prolong its existence.

*LEFEVRE had naturally a taste for domestic pleasures. He was the favorite of children, and, by many obliging attentions, discovered an interest in the female sex. He had, however, never seriously determined on wedded life. In the first instance, he was deterred by his circumstances, and afterwards, by his irregular habits: for his -generosity would not allow him deliberately to unite himself to an excellent female, (with the fear of exposing her to the ills of poverty, or the anguish of neglect. Now, indeed, as his resources were improved, and he had retreated from excesses which cost him so much, his eye turned involuntarily towards domestic life, but he could not permit himself to dwell on it.

He had lately been introduced to a family near Sevenoaks, in which was a