an object for your contempt, your
sarcasm, your abuse, your punishment; drag her away by the hair of her
head. But stay, take care you do not "strain at a gnat and swallow a
camel;" examine yourselves a little first. She has confessed, perhaps
you have not. Remember, no one knew it; no one guessed it. It is she
herself has lifted up the lantern into the dark recesses of her own
heart; or rather, it is true religion in her hath done it: and dark
though it was there, you ought to see clearly enough that her heart is
not now the den wherein falsehood and hypocrisy lurk; search well--you
see none. She has made a "clean breast of it," and you had better do the
same, and drop the stone you were about to fling so mercilessly at her
dying head. Are you out of patience, Eusebius? and cry--Out with it,
what did she do? You shall hear; 'tis but a simple anecdote after all. I
have learned it from a parish priest. He was sent for to attend the
deathbed of poor old village dame, or schoolmistress. She had a sin to
confess; she could not die in peace till she had confessed it. With
broken speech, she sobbed, and hesitated, and sobbed again.

"I--I--I," she stammered out, and hid her face again. "There, I must, I
must tell it; and may I be forgiven! You know, sir, I have kept school
forty years--yes, forty years--a poor sinful creature--I--I"----

"My good woman," said the parish priest, "take comfort; it will be
pardoned if you are thus penitent. I hope it is not a very great sin."

"Oh yes!" said she, "and pray call me not _good_ woman. I
am--not--good;" sobbing, "alas, alas!--there, I--will out with it! I put
down that I taught grammar--and (sobbing) I, I, _did not know it
myself_."

Eusebius, Eusebius, had you been there, you would have embraced the old
dame. The father of lies was not near her pillow. This little sin, she
had put it foremost, and, like the little figure before many nothings,
she had made a million of it; and one word, nay one thought, before
confession was uttered, had breathed upon and obliterated the whole
amount. Where will you see so great truth? And this, you will agree with
me, was a case of _Tender Conscience_.

FOOTNOTES:

{A} _Religio Medici_, a new edition, with its sequel, _Christian Morals_,
and resemblant passages from Cowper's _Task_. By Mr Peace, Bristol. The
text of this inestimable author is here cleared of its many errors, and
the volume contains a useful verbal index.

THIERRY'S