ge.'

'The true cant of the day,' said Herries, in a tone of scorn. 'The
privilege of free action belongs to no mortal--we are tied down by
the fetters of duty--our mortal path is limited by the regulations
of honour--our most indifferent actions are but meshes of the web of
destiny by which we are all surrounded.'

He paced the room rapidly, and proceeded in a tone of enthusiasm
which, joined to some other parts of his conduct, seems to intimate an
over-excited imagination, were it not contradicted by the general tenor
of his speech and conduct.

'Nothing,' he said, in an earnest yet melancholy voice--'nothing is the
work of chance--nothing is the consequence of free-will--the liberty of
which the Englishman boasts gives as little real freedom to its owner as
the despotism, of an Eastern sultan permits to his slave. The usurper,
William of Nassau, went forth to hunt, and thought, doubtless, that it
was by an act of his own royal pleasure that the horse of his murdered
victim was prepared for his kingly sport. But Heaven had other views;
and before the sun was high, a stumble of that very animal over an
obstacle so inconsiderable as a mole-hillock, cost the haughty rider
his life and his usurped crown, Do you think an inclination of the rein
could have avoided that trifling impediment? I tell you, it crossed his
way as inevitably as all the long chain of Caucasus could have done.
Yes, young man, in doing and suffering, we play but the part allotted by
Destiny, the manager of this strange drama, stand bound to act no more
than is prescribed, to say no more than is set down for us; and yet we
mouth about free-will and freedom of thought and action, as if Richard
must not die, or Richmond conquer, exactly where the Author has decreed
it shall be so!'

He continued to pace the room after this speech, with folded arms and
downcast looks; and the sound of his steps and tone of his voice brought
to my remembrance, that I had heard this singular person, when I met him
on a former occasion, uttering such soliloquies in his solitary chamber.
I observed that, like other Jacobites, in his inveteracy against the
memory of King William, he had adopted the party opinion, that the
monarch, on the day he had his fatal accident, rode upon a horse once
the property of the unfortunate Sir John Friend, executed for high
treason in 1698.

It was not my business to aggravate, but, if possible, rather to soothe
him in whose power I was s