During these conversations I remarked that Lucilla, though she commonly observed the most profound silence, had her attention always riveted on the speaker. If that speaker was Dr. Barlow, or her father, or any one whom she thought entitled to particular respect, she gently laid down her work, and as quietly resumed it when they had done speaking.

I observed to Sir John Belfield, afterward, as we were walking together, how modestly flattering her manner was when any of us were reading; how intelligent her silence; how well-bred her attention.

"I have often contrasted it," replied he, "with the manners of some other ladies of my acquaintance, who are sometimes of our quiet evening party. When one is reading history, or any ordinary book, aloud to them, I am always pleased that they should pursue their little employments. It amuses themselves, and gives ease and familiarity to the social circle. But while I have been reading, as has sometimes happened, a passage of the highest sublimity, or most tender interest, I own I feel a little indignant to see the shuttle plied with as eager assiduity as if the Destinies themselves were weaving the thread. I have known a lady take up the candlestick to search for her netting-pin, in the midst of Cato's soliloquy; or stoop to pick up her scissors while Hamlet says to the ghost, 'I'll go no further.' I remember another who would whisper across the table to borrow thread while Lear has been raving in the storm, or Macbeth starting at the spirit of Banquo; and make signs for a thread-paper while cardinal Beaufort 'dies, and makes no sign.' Nay, once I remember when I was with much agitation hurrying through the gazette of the battle of Trafalgar, while I pronounced, almost agonized, the last memorable words of the immortal Nelson, I heard one lady whisper to another that she had broken her needle."

"It would be difficult to determine," replied I, "whether this inattention most betrays want of sense, of feeling, or of good breeding. The habit of attention should be carefully formed in early life, and then the mere force of custom would teach these ill-bred women 'to assume the virtue if they have it not.'"

The family at the Grove was, with us, an inexhaustible topic whenever we met. I observed to Sir John, "that I had sometimes noticed in charitable families a display, a bustle, a kind of animal restlessness, a sort of mechanical besoin to be charitably busy. That though they fulfilled conscientiously one part of the apostolic injunction, that of 'giving,' yet they failed in the other clause, that of doing it 'with simplicity.'"

"Yes," replied he, "I visit a charitable lady in town, who almost puts me out of love with benevolence. Her own bounties form the entire subject of her conversation. As soon as the breakfast is removed, the table is regularly covered with plans, and proposals, and subscription papers. This display conveniently performs the threefold office of publishing her own charities, furnishing subjects of altercation, and raising contributions on the visitor. Her narratives really cost me more than my subscription. She is so full of debate, and detail, and opposition; she makes you read so many papers of her own drawing up, and so many answers to the schemes of other people, and she has so many objections to every other person's mode of doing good, and so many arguments to prove that her own is the best, that she appears less like a benevolent lady than a chicaning attorney."

"Nothing," said I, "corrects this bustling bounty so completely, as when it is mixed up with religion, I should rather say, as when it flows from religion. This motive, so far from diminishing the energy, augments it; but it cures the display, and converts the irritation into a principle. It transfers the activity from the tongue to the heart. It is the only sort of charity which 'blesses twice.' All charity, indeed, blesses the receiver; but the blessing promised to the giver, I have sometimes trembled to think, may be forfeited even by a generous mind, from ostentation and parade in the manner, and want of purity in the motive."

"In Stanley's family," replied he, in a more serious tone, "I have met with a complete refutation of that favorite maxim in the world, that religion is a dull thing itself, and makes its professors gloomy and morose. Charles! I have often frequented houses where pleasure was the avowed object of idolatry. But to see the votaries of the 'reeling goddess,' after successive nights passed in her temples! to see the languor, the listlessness, the discontent—you would rather have taken them for her victims than her worshipers. So little mental vivacity, so little gayety of heart! In short, after no careless observations, I am compelled to declare, that I never saw two forms less alike than those of Pleasure and Happiness."

"Your testimony, Sir John," said I, "is of great weight in a case of which you are so experienced a judge. What a different scene do we now contemplate! Mr. Stanley seems to have diffused his own spirit through the whole family. What makes his example of such efficacy is, that he considers the Christian temper as so considerable a part of Christianity. This temper seems to imbue his whole soul, pervade his whole conduct, and influence his whole conversation. I see every day some fresh occasion to admire his candor, his humility, his constant reference, not as a topic of discourse, but as a principle of conduct, to the gospel as the standard by which actions are to be weighed. His conscientious strictness of speech, his serious reproof of calumnies, his charitable construction of every case which has two sides; 'his simplicity and godly sincerity;' his rule of referring all events to providential direction, and his invariable habit of vindicating the divine goodness under dispensations apparently the most unfavorable."

Here Sir John left me, and I could not forbear pursuing the subject in soliloquy as I proceeded in my walk. I reflected with admiration that Mr. Stanley, in his religious conversation, rendered himself so useful, because instead of the uniform nostrum of the drop and the pill, he applied a different class of arguments, as the case required, to objectors to the different parts of Christianity; to ill informed persons who adopted a partial gospel without understanding it as a scheme, or embracing it as a whole; to those who allow its truth merely on the same ground of evidence that establishes the truth of any other well authenticated history, and who, satisfied with this external evidence, not only do not feel its power on their own heart, but deny that it has any such influence on the hearts of others; to those who believe the gospel to be a mere code of ethics; to their antipodes, who assert that Christ has lowered the requisitions of the law; to Lady Belfield, who rests on her charities—Sir John, on his correctness—Lady Aston, on her austerities; to this man, who values himself solely on the stoutness of his orthodoxy; to another, on the firmness of his integrity; to a third, on the peculiarities of his party, he addresses himself with a particular view to their individual errors. This he does with such a discriminating application to the case as might lead the ill-informed to suspect that he was not equally earnest in those other points, which, not being attacked, he does not feel himself called on to defend, but which, had they been attacked, he would then have defended with equal zeal as relative to the discussion. To crown all, I contemplated that affectionate warmth of heart, that sympathizing kindness, that tenderness of feeling, of which the gay and the thoughtless fancy that they themselves possess the monopoly, while they make over harshness, austerity, and want of charity to religious men, as their inseparable characteristics.

These qualities excite in my heart a feeling compounded of veneration, and of love. And oh! how impossible it is, even in religion itself, to be disinterested! All these excellences I contemplate with a more heartfelt delight from the presumptuous hope that I may one day have the felicity of connecting myself still more intimately with them.