, poetical as well as prose. This pursuit, and
the all but blasphemous vehemence with which I gave myself up to it, was,
perhaps, partly reactionary. A somewhat injudicious austerity and
precision had indissolubly associated in my childish days the ideas of
restraint and gloom with religion. I bore it a grudge; and so, when I
became thus early my own master, I set about paying off, after my own
fashion, the old score I owed it. I was besides, like every other young
infidel whom it has been my fate to meet, a conceited coxcomb. A
smattering of literature, without any real knowledge, and a great
assortment of all the cut-and-dry flippancies of the school I had
embraced, constituted my intellectual stock in trade. I was, like most of
my school of philosophy, very proud of being an unbeliever; and fancied
myself, in the complacency of my wretched ignorance, at an immeasurable
elevation above the church-going, Bible-reading herd, whom I treated with
a good-humoured superciliousness which I thought vastly indulgent.

My wife was an excellent little creature and truly pious. She had married
me in the full confidence that my levity was merely put on, and would at
once give way before the influence she hoped to exert upon my mind. Poor
little thing! she deceived herself. I allowed her, indeed, to do entirely
as she pleased; but for myself, I carried my infidelity to the length of
an absolute superstition. I made an ostentation of it. I would rather
have been in a "hell" than in a church on Sunday; and though I did not
prevent my wife's instilling her own principles into the minds of our
children, I, in turn, took especial care to deliver mine upon all
occasions in their hearing, by which means I trusted to sow the seeds of
that unprejudiced scepticism in which I prided myself, at least as early
as my good little partner dropped those of her own gentle "superstition"
into their infant minds. Had I had my own absurd and impious will in this
matter, my children should have had absolutely no religious education
whatsoever, and been left wholly unshackled to choose for themselves
among all existing systems, infidelity included, precisely as chance,
fancy, or interest might hereafter determine.

It is not to be supposed that such a state of things did not afford her
great uneasiness. Nevertheless, we were so very fond of one another,
and in our humble way enjoyed so many blessings, that we were as
entirely happy as any pair can be wit