in the days of our warmest emotions, Conway, that while nature was before us, -while we gazed on the mingled grandeur, and softness, and tenderness, of a glorious sun-set, for instance, or autumn moon-light, we did not reason,we loved, we adored. It was when the impression was past that we began to reason. We considered the result of those reasonings very beneficial to us, and those moments of rapture which led to them as the purest and sweetest of our lives, and I doubt not they did tend to calm and elevate our minds. But, Conway, did we after all know God? or did we in truth ever worship him?

Con. Did you not say this moment, Howard, that, on viewing the sublimity and beauty of God's creation, we loved, we adored?

How. Yes, Conway; our hearts were filled to painfulness with feelings of love and adoration, but on what or whom did we bestow those full affections? We

gazed on the loveliness of creation, till our hearts panted to find and love its Creator,-but did we find him? We retired and became calm; and recollecting the beautiful order of the heavens, and the profusion of charm that was displayed through all nature, we saw dimly that he who created and sustained the greatness, and minuteness, and loveliness, and order of the whole, must himself be inconceivably great, and inconceivably wise, and inconceivably lovely,—and we felt that in our natures we were at an inconceivable distance from him; and he passed from our thoughts as altogether inconceivable, while we believed, that amidst the wonderful vastness of his providence, we, as a part, and in connection with other intelligent parts of a great machinery, would be sustained in existence till we came to the moment when we must submit to the common fate, and pass through death-we hoped to immortality; but the nature of that immortali

ty we guessed at too dimly, to rest our thoughts upon it,—at all events, it would be happy to the virtuous.

Con. Well, Howard, I know not that by reasoning we can approach any nearer to God. But, my friend, you speak as if we had actually denied the truth of Christianity; now, in a modified sense, neither of us ever rejected the Bible as the guide of our hopes,—and its morality, at least that of the New Testament, though perhaps impracticable, we considered beautifully pure,-and its Founder

How. Do not proceed, Conway. Pardon me for interrupting you, but I know your opinions; they were mine, and it is in these opinions I am utterly changed. Those I formerly held, now appear to me tremendously guilty. You are offended, Conway; but I must speak to you, my friend, dear to me as my own soul, what now appears to me truth as clear as day. Conway, we have both erred, dreadfully

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erred. My letters to you have betrayed the change in my soul. Oh! if you knew how I have attempted to express my meaning in those letters so as not to shock you, or seem to you a madman !— and now I have almost convinced you that I am one.

Con. Will you answer me one question, Howard, without reserve, and without being offended at my plainness?

How. I will, Conway, whatever it is. Con. Then, in the very plainest words, my dear Howard, were you afraid to die?

How. Plain enough indeed that question, Conway. Do you think I should have felt so much mortified, as I confess I did on your saying such was the report concerning me, had it been true ?

Con. Pardon me, dear Howard; yet sometimes we are betrayed into weaknesses which we would not wish known.

How. True, Conway; forgive my being hurt at your question,-I shall an

swer it as truly as I can. I was not, I suppose, more afraid than every man in his senses is, of the agonies of death. Of what should follow I had no painful dread, though now I think my feeling of security on that point was most presumptuous folly. But, Conway, there are many things in death we must shrink from, if we have any feeling. That man is happy, if he is prepared for it, who dies in battle, or wherever he escapes the looks of wife, and children, and friends. I passed some indescribably sad hours, when I considered myself dying. In these moments, the soul feels its own weakness, and searches for something out of itself to lean on, I could find nothing. My illness was accompanied with comparatively little fever, and left my mind astonishingly clear; yet I declare to you, on my word, I felt no fear which I believe is not common to every man in similar circumstances, either of death or of its consequences.