another life merely by the sacrifice of this,” replied Mrs. Clinton. "There is no Divine command to pay forfeit for our sins by scourging and starving! I saw several of the poor Papists, as I came here, crawling round inside the Chapel of St. Bridget on their bare knees, stopping at times before the altars of various saints to offer them prayers!

"Such is the unnatural suicide of mind and body inculcated by those who would cramp, crush, and prematurely destroy all the divinely given functions of mind and body," observed Lady Edith thoughtfully. "How different from Protestantism, which is like a majestic cliff with flowers blooming at its feet, and the glorious light of heaven blazing on the summit."

.

"I read, lately," added Mrs. Clinton, "the book published in 1839 by a Cardinal, for the edification of those English readers who are invited to revolve obediently around the Popish hemisphere. One of the five newly canonized saints is described as taking for his only food a dish of soup, which was both insipid and disagreeable. The bread was black and not even leavened, and so hard that it was necessary to pound it in a mortar before he could eat it. This miserable food, which the five saints, recommended as our examples, ate kneeling, or stretched upon the ground, they rendered still more nauseous by sprinkling it over with some bitter stuff, and many of them before eating licked

the floor with their tongues. One day Liguori's secretary had to burst open his door and snatch the discipline out of his hand, fearing lest the violence with which he scourged himself might cause his death. Such is the monomania of Romanism; but my husband seems really most successful in opening the eyes of Mrs. Lorraine !

"I wish she may not rather blind his eyes, Mrs. Clinton," answered Lady Edith very earnestly. "Why does your excellent husband show an example in the village of associating so much with a proselyting Papist? That woman has as many bad ingredients in her character as a witch's caldron, and is surely dangerous both to himself and to his parishioners!"

"Quite a mistake!" replied Mrs. Clinton, goodhumouredly laughing. "Mrs. Lorraine makes no impression on him, and says she has no earthly object but to improve herself by his arguments."

CHAPTER VI.

"And all in high baronial pride,
A life both dull and dignified."

As the chariot whirled along which conveyed two rather unwilling visitors to Eaglescairn, Lady Edith's sensitive feelings shrank from the thought that she was received merely as a necessary evil, in association with her beloved Beatrice, and no sacrifice among the many she daily made in a long life had been less in accordance with her taste than thus to accept an invitation so ungraciously given. The motive was a pure and holy desire to see, once more, the young heir of Sir Evan, formerly so dear to her, and still the object of so much sorrowful solicitude, but it was with no hope remaining that she might snatch him back from the snare into which he had been entrapped. Lady Edith knew now, from all report, that Sir Allan was no longer as the stranger had described, "in a state of halfand-half-ism," but was fallen into that mental delirium beyond the reach of reason or argument, in which the obedient votaries of superstition are held, by the priest keeping them feverish

with starvation, sleeplessness, and terror-struck austerities. The progress of such feelings is imperceptible as the shades of evening darkening into night. No! Allan had rushed on blindfold, now beyond the reach of argument, of affection, of reason, but still he was Allan, the dearly beloved inmate of her old home, the object of her most affectionate solicitude, and she must look upon him once more, while yet his perversion was not finally sealed, while yet he had not fallen into the dark abyss of error and perdition yawning at his feet, while yet the grief she felt for him was not utterly without hope.

To the young eyes of Beatrice, the grey towers of Eaglescairn Castle always had a spectral aspect, so tall, gaunt and dismal, but it seemed to her an unreal dream that she was now about to be enclosed within the very heart of this Popish fortress, and there, for the first time, to meet again Allan McAlpine, now probably as much divided from herself in every hope and feeling as if they belonged to two different worlds. It seemed a dismal end of their long and happy intercourse in childhood and early youth; but she felt with almost heart-broken, grief that this meeting was probably but the precursor to a last farewell.

Home had once been to Beatrice almost an earthly Paradise, and it would have been so still, but for the one dark spot in her thoughts, the gloomy

apprehension of what awaited Allan hereafter, were he to join that church which exacts the blind obedience of a brute to authority, rather than the enlightened conformity of a rational being to principle; and she thought how different from that of any Pope had been the teaching of St. Peter, when he tells Christians, "Be always ready to give a reason for the hope that is in you."

Strange to see in our own sensible Scotland such a sight as that!" exclaimed Lady Edith, as they drove past the popish half of Clanmarina, a dark spot in that beautiful panorama, for it was one scene of universal filth, ignorance, profligacy, discontent, and ferocity, only to be matched in priest-ridden Ireland. The people were neglected in body, in house, and soul, by Father Eustace, who only proved his existence by ruling their consciences with a rod of iron, by emptying their purses with a face of brass, and by dividing their families with a heart of steel.

On this day, he had promised miraculously to cure the potato blight, and assembled all his ragged votaries round the Holy Well of St. Bridget, where the priest now stood surrounded by a crowd of votaries calling on their patron saint to remedy this disease. The shrubs around were hung with rags as evidences of the cures still to be performed. Many wore charms and scapulars blessed by Father Eustace to keep them from harm, and they