medicine, and have tried to instil into them religious principles, and Mr. Meek has endeavoured to do the same, but our united efforts have ended in no satisfactory results. Though I have made quite a slave of myself amongst the wretches, and done so much for them, yet, for all my exertions, I never hear of any particular credit which I have got either amongst them or with any body else; not that I care for public opinion, yet I do think when people of my own standing condescend to enter such scenes of squalor, dirt, and disgust, there ought to be some little gratitude for so much self-sacrifice, and for such an amount of volunteered services. But I shall give it all up-that I shall," concluded the benevolent Letitia emphatically.

"The urgent advice of your father, my dear, is at once to carry out that very wise and wholesome determination. For my own part, to tell the truth, I have for some time past deemed you a great simpleton for giving yourself so much trouble. It is not the first instance I have known of amateur charityhunting. Now to descend for a moment into

dispassionate argument. Don't I pay a large annual contribution to their necessities in the way of poor-rates? Hav'nt they, when really destitute, bed and board at the workhouse? Hav'nt they a parish doctor? Ain't they buried respectably; and isn't the very same service read over them as for their betters, and all that? Is it not the general admission of all well-informed people, that

the poor of this country are provided for-by legislative enactment, mind—provided for, I say, with a higher scale of living than the poor of any other country? Charities may be so liberally dispensed, as actually to set a premium upon pauperism; precisely as in many of our prisons the generous fare is unquestionably an inducement to the commission of crime.

"I only wish that I had been in Parliament, I would have laboured desperately for a different state of things relative to these matters-'tis a shame that these anomalies have not been considered. Who'll thank you, I should like to know, for the charitable bubbling of your kitchen copper with its

savoury meats and dried herbs—for your laudable endeavours to sow virtue and produce good order amongst vice and filthaye, and for running the daily risk of contracting some pestilential malady? Who? why nobody. I have not lived so long in the world as to be unable to see that public sympathy, public-spiritedness, and the like, are sheer humbug. If such vain-glorious folks as Lady Dashover entertain a morbid desire to be spoken of up-hill and down-dale as shining examples of sanctity, I can only say, don't you, my dear Letitia, lend yourself to such hypocritical display-to such pharisaical nonsense."

"Folks say Lady Dashover is an angelicminded woman-so truly religious and-"

"Folks say, observe you, 'Tishy-yes, folks not unfrequently say a great deal of humbug," replied Gideon, sarcastically. "There is a fashion in such fulsome demonstrations as in everything else. Yes, religion has become a fashion, and especially amongst a set of simple-minded, sentimental women. Wasn't it currently reported that our new vicar in

town was literally run after by the ladies of his congregation so long as he remained a bachelor; and didn't you hear it stated again and again that he received as presents from the pious fair no less than nineteen silver tea-pots, two dozen pairs of worked slippers, and other things without end and count? When he did at length marry one of them, the tide of attention and presents then set in full flow towards the young curate, and the poor nervous creature was well nigh waylaid by calculating matrons and devotional misses. For my part, I hate all this cant; and though I have always been a thorough, out-and-out churchman, yet I don't pretend to be better than others, and have no longing taste to be cried up as a would-be-pietist."

"No doubt Lady Dashover is flattered by the country papers eloquently speaking of her blanket and beef distributions-her visiting societies and so forth, and when the whole neighbourhood rings with her holy doings, she of course is not deaf to popular applause, notwithstanding her assumed disregard of all such commendations.

I

agree with you, papa, that there is a great deal of insincerity and cant in all thisindeed, I very much doubt Lady Dashover's hidden motives," rejoined Letitia, in a denouncing tone of contemptuousness for Lady Dashover's good works.

"There's so much deception now-a-days, that it is impossible to decide on people's motives. I learnt, however, from the ample pages of human nature-and you know Letitia your father was always renowned for his penetration into character-that to doubt and disbelieve every one is the right way, and if do chance to stumble on a pure, you out-and-out honest 'un, only then look upon him as an exception, and fit (if there were such an institution), and fit, I say to be put into a museum of the moral world."

It was the misfortune, nay, more, the sinfulness of Gideon Clynchiere, to entertain unjust and slippery notions in all that regarded true benevolence, and real religion. To suit his own feelings of avarice and narrowmindedness, he railed against the good, and laughed at virtue. A disbeliever in the