om the other. The antipathy between the two was
mutual, and discovered itself quite palpably in a short time. When my
companion the prince was gone, Mr. Blanchard asked me anent him, and I
told him that he was a stranger in the city, but a very uncommon and
great personage. Mr. Blanchard's answer to me was as follows: "I never
saw anybody I disliked so much in my life, Mr. Robert; and if it be
true that he is a stranger here, which I doubt, believe me he is come
for no good."

"Do you not perceive what mighty powers of mind he is possessed of?"
said I, "and also how clear and unhesitating he is on some of the most
interesting points of divinity?"

"It is for his great mental faculties that I dread him," said he. "It
is incalculable what evil such a person as he may do, if so disposed.
There is a sublimity in his ideas, with which there is to me a mixture
of terror; and, when he talks of religion, he does it as one that
rather dreads its truths than reverences them. He, indeed, pretends
great strictness of orthodoxy regarding some of the points of doctrine
embraced by the reformed church; but you do not seem to perceive that
both you and he are carrying these points to a dangerous extremity.
Religion is a sublime and glorious thing, the bonds of society on
earth, and the connector of humanity with the Divine nature; but there
is nothing so dangerous to man as the wresting of any of its
principles, or forcing them beyond their due bounds: this is of all
others the readiest way to destruction. Neither is there anything so
easily done. There is not an error into which a man can fall which he
may not press Scripture into his service as proof of the probity of,
and though your boasted theologian shunned the full discussion of the
subject before me, while you pressed it, I can easily see that both you
and he are carrying your ideas of absolute predestination, and its
concomitant appendages, to an extent that overthrows all religion and
revelation together; or, at least, jumbles them into a chaos, out of
which human capacity can never select what is good. Believe me, Mr.
Robert, the less you associate with that illustrious stranger the
better, for it appears to me that your creed and his carries damnation
on the very front of it."

I was rather stunned at this; but pretended to smile with disdain, and
said it did not become youth to control age; and, as I knew our
principles differed fundamentally, it behoved us to drop the