ers.

Before we parted, effectual measures were taken for the comfortable
subsistence of the sick mother, and for alleviating the sorrows, and
lightening the labors of her daughter, and next morning I set out on my
journey for Stanley Grove, Sir John and Lady Belfield promising to
follow me in a few weeks.

* * * * *

As soon as I got into my post-chaise, and fairly turned my back on
London, I fell into a variety of reflections on the persons with whom I
had been living. In this soliloquy, I was particularly struck with that
discrepancy of characters, all of which are yet included under the broad
comprehensive appellation of _Christians_. I found that though all
differed widely from each other, they differed still more widely from
that rule by which they professed to walk. Yet not one of these
characters was considered as disreputable. There was not one that was
profane or profligate. Not one who would not in conversation have
defended Christianity if its truth had been attacked. Not one who
derided or even neglected its forms; and who in her own class would not
have passed for religious. Yet how little had any one of them adorned
the profession she adopted! Of Mrs. Ranby, Mrs. Fentham, Lady Bab
Lawless, Lady Denham, Lady Melbury, which of them would not have been
startled had her Christianity been called in question? Yet how merely
speculative was the religion of even the most serious among them! How
superficial, or inconsistent, or mistaken, or hollow, or hypocritical,
or self-deceiving was that of all the others! Had either of them been
asked from what source she drew her religion, she would indignantly have
answered, from the Bible. Yet if we compare the copy with the model,
the Christian with Christianity, how little can we trace the
resemblance! In what particular did their lives imitate the life of Him
_who pleased not himself_, who _did the will of his Father_; who _went
about doing good_? How irreconcilable is their faith with the principles
which He taught! How dissimilar their practice with the precepts He
delivered! How inconsistent their lives with the example He bequeathed!
How unfounded their hope of heaven, if an entrance into heaven be
restricted to those who are _like minded with Christ_!

CHAPTER XIII.

My father had been early in life intimately connected with the family of
Mr. Stanley. Though this gentleman was his junior by several years, yet
there subsi