CHAPTER III.

MORE than a month elapsed before I found it prácticable to effect an interview, for I understood his illness had continued. At length, one evening in the middle of August, as I was taking my usual walk, I met him on his way from the church-yard. The moment I cast my eye on him, I was surprised at the change which so short a time had produced in his appearance, for though his cheek was a little flushed with the exercise of the walk and the warmth of the evening sun, yet his body was much wasted, his respiration short and quick, and his eye lit with a lustre, which I knew did not belong to health. When I advanced up to him, he immediately recognized me, and as the situation in which I now found him was not, like the last, one where affection indulg

ed its secret grief, he therefore felt not the same disrelish of society which he had then evinced. He even anticipated me in the salutations of the evening, and bowed, with a smile in which, notwithstanding the delicate circumstances under which we had met before, I read a kind and courteous remembrance of the very slight civility I had rendered him with respect to his breviary. He was dressed in a black surtout that made his fine person, which was naturally tall, look much taller; instead of the common clerical small-clothes, he wore black cassimere trowsers, with cotton stockings, exceedingly white and fine; and there was altogether in his dress and tout ensemble something which at once bespoke the elegant, liberal mind, and the gentleman; on a closer inspection, a man of penetration might observe through all this the elevated seriousness of a Christian. After the first civilities of recognition were over, "I think, Sir," said he, "I owe you some apology for the abruptness and apparent want of courtesy of my manner on our rencontre in the church-yard some weeks ago. I say so, because I thought that I observed something

in you which told me I encountered a kind spirit; I was, however, at the moment, in a state of agitation which nothing but a consciousness of privacy could have permitted me to indulge. You will, then, have the goodness, Sir, not to impute the slight notice I took of your civility to any thing intentional on my part, but really to the embarrassment I felt on being discovered under the influence of feelings incompatible with the severe character of my profession,-for I am a clergyman of the Church of Rome." "There is not, Sir," I replied, "the slightest occasion for an apology on your part; on the contrary, if any be due, it is from me, whose appearance, I certainly could perceive, was unseasonable; for I know myself, alas! from experience, that the heart which is loaded with affliction or grief retires to solitude in the fulness of its emotion, that it may weep away the burthen which oppresses it: there is a modesty in real sorrow which shuns the eye of day and the gaze of observation; but I cannot see," I continued, "why the tear which you shed over the grave of a departed friend, should be incompatible with your character

as a clergyman." "I do not mean to say," he returned, "that the exercise of the kindlier and humaner feelings are so generally, or should be so; but there are some cases where a sense of duty differs from our own conviction, and when these occur, we are bound to sacrifice what we feel to what we know; particularly when what we feel runs counter to those regulations, an obedience to which, on our part, constitutes a duty." "I do not," said I, "perfectly see the application of your last remark, because I do not understand the nature of the regulations to which you allude, nor do I properly apprehend how a man's conviction and his sense of duty can be at variance, as long as he himself is a free agent, and capable of correcting the error of the one by the rectitude of the other, or by some better standard." "But," said he, "are there not situations in which man is not a free agent?" "I grant that," said I, "but do you think it should be so?" "Perhaps," said he, musing, "it should." "Undoubtedly," said I, "to a certain extent; for instance, he who has the disposition to injure society in general, or any individual in particular, should not be per

mitted to possess the power, nor, consequently, to be so far a free agent; but wherever there is a restraint laid upon a capacity to do good, whether that restraint arise from a regulation that imposes a duty or otherwise, man in such circumstances is not free, and consequently not happy."

When I had uttered these words, his eye glanced at me with an expression, in which there appeared to be at once conviction and inquiry. He seemed to conjecture that I had heard something of his history and of his sufferings, and that I spoke to his particular case. "I would," said he, "better perceive the truth of your observation, if it were less abstract and unlimited." "I do not relish mystery," I replied, "no more than I do an unwarrantable curiosity; but when you said, just now, that the sorrow in which you indulged for its departed object on our first meeting, was inconsistent with your character as a clergyman, I must confess I thought the expression a remarkable one." "When I used it," he replied, "I did so, as a proof that I was not unwilling to cultivate your society and esteem, otherwise I would not have touched