shall see you again with pleasure, if you recollect it; but, if you forget it, we shall not the less pray to God for you, for you have given us an hour's happiness, and we have not inany such. Farewell, sir! STRANGER. Worthy man! if I were capable of forgetting you, I should not deserve the happiness which I am going to seek, and which I tremble lest I should not find. It is more than five-andtwenty years since I left my family; during all that time, I have had no news of it: my parents, doubtlessly, think me dead, or perhaps are themselves no longer alive; but if I find them again, how blest shall we all be ! BERTHA, weeping. Ah! yes, indeed. Blest, a thousand times blest, those who find their children again upon the earth! As for us, we shall never see them but in heaven, where they await us. MARCELLUS. You see, my wife, whether I was wrong this morning, when I said that living children are also the occasion of many sorrows. Here is one that seems to be a worthy man; well! he has quitted his parents, and left them twenty-five years without news of him: is not this worse than death? STRANGER. I was guilty, indeed, when, through youthful folly, and seduced by a recruiting officer, I enlisted without their permission; but the rest is not my fault. The regiment into which I entered was ordered to Batavia, where I was at first sent into the interior of the country, to work at my trade of carpenter; and thus I passed many years without having it in my power to write. When I came back to Batavia, I wrote many letters to my father, but never received any reply. I was successful in getting money, but of what use is it when the heart is uneasy? Mine was in Europe. I thought incessantly of the village in which I was born, and in which I had left all that I loved in the world-my father, my mother, and my sister. I resolved on returning home, and I embarked with my little fortune. I arrived happily at Hamburgh two months and there I found by chance my old master with whom I had learned my trade, and who had fixed himself there since my departure. I knew him at once, but he could not recognize me, for I had grown a little tawny beneath the suns of Batavia, as you see. When I told hin my name, he was greatly surprized. He received me as a son, and took me to his house. There I found his daughter, whom I had left a little child, grown up tall and pretty. Every day, I resolved on going in search of my parents the next; but Annette asked me to stay a day longer, and I stayed : it was in my power to refuse her nothing. I had written on my arrival, and I awaited an answer. Seeing that it did not come, I said one day to my master, Your Annette and I love each other; I have gained so much by my work; give her to me for a wife, and ago, afterward go afterward I will go in search of my parents, and we will all live together ;--but Annette must be mine before we part. I consent, said my master; Annette is your's, and shall you in search of your family. What was said was done; I married Annette, and two days afterward I began my journey. My Annette has the heart of a queen: she bought a fine piece of silk for a gown for my mother. Her father gave her twelve louis for a dowry on her wedding-day, and she folded up four double louis in this piece of paper, saying to me, Carry these from me to your father, to pay his journey. This is not all; she took her cross and gold chain off her neck, to send them to my sister, accompanied with some lines of friendship. I have travelled gaily with all these presents of Aunette's; and now you are able to judge what would have been my affliction if I had lost them, and in what degree I am under obligations to you for their restoration. But, alas! if I am travelling to find my parents dead, that were a still greater evil : my heart bleeds to think of it! They must be very old, for I am now not young. As to my sister, I am in no fear about her, for she was younger than I. My good father was an honest man, and, thank God, he was in good circumstances. He had always a glass of wine and a sous to give to the poor, and my mother some old linen in reserve for those that had need of it. You may have heard talk, I should think, of Old Marcellus de Pellnitz, and his wife Bertha? O my God! cried the old man, spreading his arms, is it a dream? Bertha! Bertha! is this our son restored to life! O my God! can it be possible? Marcell- it is he! it is Francis! What words can convey to the reader the least idea or the feelings which at this moment these three persons experienced? This was indeed the son so long believed to be dead, and whose death had been so long bewept. Bertha was unable to speak. She sought, on the neck and on the forehead of her son, those inconspicuous marks with which only a mother is acquainted. She found them, kissed them, and showed them to her husband. On our knees, Bertha, cried out at length the old man, falling upon his own, let God be thanked--who gives us already a paradise upon this earth, and who restores to us our son! But no! paradise is not upon this earth, where happiness is never complete. The remembrance of Georgette reminded them that they were but mortals. And my sister-my poor sister, said Francis, mournfully you have said that you had no childrenwhat have you done with Georgette? She died in my arms, said Bertha, bursting into tears; she will not wear that pretty necklace! Francis took the necklace, and put it round his mother's neck. I am sure that she sees us, said Marcellus, lifting his eyes to heaven. I think I see see her above, on a cloud, with a crown of glory on her head. Marcellus, at this moment, saw nothing but glory and bliss. After a moment of silence, Well, said Marcellus to his wife, you see, that the hospital which has so much distressed you-people sometimes get out of it alive. Francis now related, that it was there he had become acquainted with a wounded serjeant, who was in a bed near him, and who had enlisted him, and made him depart as soon as he was sufficiently recovered to march. The rest of his history he had told before. Marcellus and Bertha described, in their turn, the misfortunes by which they had been ruined, and the extreme poverty to which they were at last reduced. It had hastened on their old age, and changed their features, not less than the Indian sun had tanned the skin of their child: it was, therefore, not surprizing they remained so long undiscovered. All three returned to the cottage. Francis went round to thank the inhabitants of the village for all the kindness they had shown his parents. It is needless to say, that on the following day, he carried them to the next town, to provide them with clothing. After this, they set out for Hamburgh, where they were received with open arms by the good Annette and her father. Marcellus and Bertha lived with the rest of the family, in the midst of their grandchildren; and, at the close of every day, Marcellus said to his wife, God has given us a paradise upon earth! IN LETTERS ON FRANCE AND ENGLAND. (Continued from page 47.) LETTER VI. N the course of my residence in Paris, I formed an acquaintance with the Abbé Barruel, whose work on the Masonic societies of Europe once attracted so much both of censure and applause. Barruelism, the title given to his exposition of the views of the German Illuminati, is now not only out of vogue, but has almost fallen into oblivion. It must, nevertheless, be acknowledged, that the world is indebted to him for some important discoveries, and much curious research. It is at the same time universally admitted, that his hatred of jacobinism, and the warmth of his fancy, betrayed him into many exaggerated representations and idle fears. His history of the persecution of the French clergy, at the commencement of the revolution, is, in my estimation, the most valuable of his productions. It is not only a very interesting narrative, but an historical document of great importance. The The author returned to France on the establishment of the consular government, published a pamphlet in 1802, in favour of the Concordat, and was, not long after, made one of the canons of the metropolitan church of Paris; a capacity in which he continued tó act when I saw him. I found him miserably lodged, in a remote part of the capital, and laboriously occupied in a refutation of the metaphysics of Kant. He thought he had discovered a key to the riddles of the German philosopher, and denounced his principles and intentions as no less dangerous to the cause of religion and morals than those of the most atheistical of the Illuminati. The timorous and prolific imagination of the good Abbé, had, I fear, more share in the creation of the gorgons and chimeras dire,' which he supposed to exist in the unintelligible volumes of Kant, than either the heart or the head of the metaphysician himself. Whatever is perfectly obscure, is flexible to any interpretation, and if charity would allow of that which Barruel gives to the works of Kant, I should think it quite as rational and plausible as any other which it has been my unfortunate lot to peruse.* My conversations with Barruel turned principally upon the pro There never was a writer to whom the following ingenious couplet, addressed by Maynard to Balsac, might be applied with more justice than to Kant: Mon ami, chasse bien loin Cette noire rhétorique; Si ton esprit veut cacher Dugald Stewart, in the admirable volume of Philosophical Essays which he has recently published, pronounces an opinion on the subject of Kant's writings, which is well worth transcribing, as it falls from the highest authority: 'As to Kant's works, I must fairly acknowledge, that, although I have frequently attempted to read them in the Latin edition, printed at Leipsic, I have always been forced to abandon the undertaking in despair; partly from the scholastic barbarism of the style, and partly from my utter inability to unravel the author's meaning. Wherever I have happened to obtain a momentary glimpse of light, I have derived it, not from Kant himself, but from any previous acquaintance with those opinions of Leibnitz, Berkeley, Hume, Reid, and others, which he has endeavoured to appropriate to himself, under the deep disguise of his new phraseology. No writer certainly ever exemplified more systematically, or more successfully, the precept which Quinctilian (upon the authority of Livy) ascribes to an ancient rhetorician; and which, if the object of the teacher was merely to instruct his pupils how to command the admiration of the multitude, must be allowed to reflect no small honour on his knowledge of human nature: Neque id novum vitium est, cum jain apud Titum Livium inveniam fuisse præceptorem aliquem, qui discipulos ob scurare, quæ dicerent, juberet, Græco verbo utens-zório unde illa scilicet egregia laudatio: Tanto melior, ne ego quidem intellexi.' Quinct. Institut. • En écrivant, j'ai toujours tâché de m'entendre,' is an expression which Fontenelle somewhere uses, in speaking of his own literary habits-it conveys a hiut not unworthy of the attention of authors;-but which I would not venture to recommend to that class who may aspire to the glory of founding new schools of philosophy.' Essay II, c. 2. gress gress which religion had made in France, and on the degree of patronage which it enjoyed under the new government. No man had attended more assiduously to this subject than himself, or was better fitted both from his opportunities and feelings, to decide correctly and impartially. His statements fully confirmed what I have advanced on this head, in my first letter, descriptive of Bourdeaux, and coincided with the additional observations, which I now propose to make on the same point. The prophet Jeremiah never uttered more bitter lamentations or gloomy forebodings, with respect to Jerusalem, than did this good old man, when speaking of the actual influence and prospects of the gospel in his unchristian country. His creative fancy could not have magnified the evil, in the face of evidence open and irresistible to every observer, and if it could have exerted any sway, would have had a contrary operation, as all his wishes and affections prompted him to be sanguine. He calculated, that out of a population of six hundred thousand souls, which he ascribed to Paris, forty thousand were in the habit of going to church, and of that number he supposed about twenty thousand to be actuated by a spirit of piety. This computation coincided with the result of my own personal observation. The proportion was even larger than I expected, when I adverted to the state of public worship but a few years before, and to the prevailing system of morals and opinions. I had occasion to see frequently several of the most intelligent ecclesiastics of Paris, and to form an acquaintance with the catholic clergymen of the provincial towns through which I passed. My inquiries were eager and minute, on the subject of the progress of religion, in which, not only my attachment to this most important of all concerns, but the particular circumstances of my education, led me to take a lively interest. The testimony borne to me, was the same in every mouth, and corresponded to the result of my own experience. When the clergy commenced the legalized exercise of their functions, under the authority of the Concordat, they found the people generally a prey to the wildest anarchy in religion, and so long disused, both to its forms and restraints, as to be worse than indifferent about their return. It was utterly impossible to render them docile to the voice of the gospel, or to correct the horrible dissolution of morals which prevailed even in the interior of the country, without the zealous aid of a virtuous and peaceful government; and unless the priesthood had been invested with strong titles to the respect and obedience of the vulgar. While the rulers of France continued to set the example of an habitual violation of all law-to trample upon the most sacred rights, and to infringe every moral principle both at home and abroad;-to organize, as it were, robbery and falsehood in every part of the empire, |