nd.
If prayers avail for your conversion, constant and persevering, mine
will at last be heard."

"I thank you for your prayers, dear mother--they come from a true heart.
And now to supper, and then to my violoncello. The Herschels are
removing at once to this street--almost will their music be within
ear-shot; and there will be great works in the garden, and the largest
mirror in the kingdom will be cast. Who can tell what may be discovered?
Now, mother, you do not see sin and wickedness in star-gazing, surely?"

Mrs. Travers shook her head.

"I would not care for myself to be too curious as to the secrets which
God does not reveal."

Leslie stamped his foot impatiently, and then said:

"We cannot agree there, mother. Every gift of God is good; and if He has
given the gift of mathematical precision, and earnestness in applying it
for the better development of the grandest of all sciences, who shall
dare to say the man who exercises that gift is wrong? For my own part, I
feel uplifted in the presence of that great and good man--Mr.
Herschel--and his wonderful sister."

"'When I consider Thy heavens the work of Thy fingers,'" Mrs. Travers
quoted from the Psalms, "I say, with David, 'What is man, that Thou art
mindful of him? or the son of man, that Thou considerest him?' Such
knowledge, my dear son, as that, after which you tell me Mr. and Miss
Herschel seek, is too wonderful for me, nor do I wish to attain it. Mr.
Relley delivered a very powerful discourse on this matter last Sunday. I
would you had heard it, instead of listening to the music at the
Octagon, where the world gathers its votaries every Sabbath-day to
admire music, and forget God."

Leslie knew, by past experience, that to argue with his mother was
hopeless, and he therefore remained silent. Something told him, when all
was said, that he needed something that he did not possess. When first
threatened with consumption, and the grasshopper of his young life had
become a burden, he had looked death in the face, and shuddered. Life
was sweet to him--music, and the beautiful things which were to him as
a strain of music, were dear to his heart.

At a time when the natural beauties of field, and flower, and
over-arching sky were far less to many than the coteries of fashion and
the haunts of pleasure, so called, Leslie Travers had higher tastes, and
yet he would fain have been other than he was. Religion, as offered to
him by his mother's teachers, rep