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effects which might be produced on the servants' minds by such exposures, gradually worked upon his own mind, and cooled his zeal, rendering him such as you now see him, a troublesome pragmatical fellow indeed on some occasions, but one whom I have made more useful, than any man in the house, in checking the forwardness of the Secretary and his party, who, after all, are the persons most to be dreaded by me, because that we have hitherto found no device by which to turn them from their purpose. Such being the state of the case,' continued Mr. Fitz-Adam,

having consulted my friends, we have been inclined to adopt a new system1 which has been in preparation and in action for some months past, though not so fully as we trust it will be in the sequel.'

'You mean,' returned Father Peter, 'your system of liberality and universal toleration, than which a more accursed system never entered the brain of man. I tell you, Mr. Steward, that mildness never has answered, and never will answer with these head-strong gentry. What has awakened this spirit of rebellion among the people, but the relaxation of discipline? What have the ignoble vulgar to do, to think for them

"Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, hes peaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it." John viii. 44.

selves? From what proceeds this spirit which has been awakened among the servants, but from the schools of which you speak, and from which, with all the boasted influence of Madame le Monde, you have not been able to exclude the Lord's letters, entirely in opposition to my advice and counsel?'

'I tell you,' said the steward, that there is a necessity to bend and accommodate to the times. You attribute those results to our places of education, which had taken effect before the doctor had even thought of these seminaries for the rabble. Who or what awakened that spirit by which you were shaken in your seat of authority, and the old chaplain restored, as it were by force to his place, and required to read the letters in the hearing of the servants? I say, who awakened that spirit, Father Peter?'

'It was when that spirit was first excited, that you should have exerted yourself, Mr. FitzAdam,' said the Father, and had you then listened to me, I should not have experienced that change of circumstances which I now have daily reason to deplore. For, oh! how fallen, how changed is my condition. When I compare the present with the past, and consider how it once was with me, when my will was even a

"Thou shalt take up this proverb against the king of Babylon, and say, How hath the oppressor ceased! the golden city ceased!.... Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols. the worm is spread under thee, and the

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law with you, Mr. Fitz-Adam, and when Madame le Monde bowed to my nod, I certainly cannot but weep, and lament, and expostulate against every change which renders my hope more distant.'

"Your hope!' returned Mr. Fitz-Adam, well, at least you must acknowledge that you have had your day; and also that if the party of him whom some call Master should entirely prevail, you would be worse off than you are now; for I tell you that they meditate little else, but ousting you altogether.'

· Mr. Fitz-Adam,' returned the father angrily, 'he to whom you refer, and whom they falsely call Master, is the person from whom I receive my authority, and of whom I am the vicar and delegate in this house, and whose seat I occupy in the midst of the people; and it is in his name,

worms cover thee. How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the Most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit. They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms; that made the world as a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof; that opened not the house of his prisoners?"—Isaiah xiv. 4, 11-17.

"Son of man, say unto the prince of Tyrus, Thus saith the Lord God, Because thine heart is lifted up, and thou hast said,

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and with his prerogatives, that I rule; and he that disputes my authority I pronounce accursed.' 'So you made many of us believe, in the time that is passed,' replied the steward, and truly at one time I found it hard myself to resist your claims; and you know perfectly well, that this is the point on which you and I quarrelled. You did assuredly at one time take strange state upon yourself, and lorded it over the house far more than was agreeable to me; pretending that I received my authority from you, and even interfering with what I should eat, and what I should drink.'2

And if I did so,' replied the Father Peter, ' did I promise you nothing in return for your submission? Did I not undertake to stand between you and the Master, and to keep the peace for you-insomuch so, that whilst you held to me and were as it were under my protection, you were at liberty to please yourself, and to enjoy your good things with Madame le Monde, and to solace yourself with the damsels her daughters, without any dread of being called to account at any future

I am a god, I sit in the seat of God, in the midst of the seas; yet thou art a man, and not God, though thou set thine heart as the heart of God."-Ezek. xxviii. 2.

2 "Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving: for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer." -1 Tim. iv. 3-5.

time. Now I ask you what promise or prospect of this sort does the doctor hold out to you. Does he presume to stand between you and the Master, or to supply you with any means short of implicit obedience by which you can avoid that reckoning, which, let me tell you, Mr. Steward, will make you and Madame le Monde look about you, come when it will, and no one knows how soon it may come?'

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Well,' said the steward, ‘let every man look to himself in that great day. As to the doctor's opinions respecting it, I never comprehended them rightly, inasmuch as he contradicts himself whenever he speaks upon the subject, sometimes upholding one thing and sometimes another; sometimes maintaining that we are all to be called over the coals and punished for ever for the smallest fault, and then saying that those who love the Master, are just for party's sake to be forgiven every thing -with other such contradictory stuff which is hardly worth repeating. But the thing I like least in the doctor is this, that with all his shew of humility he is full as ready to take any advantage in advancing his own influence in the house as ever you were, Father Peter. I am fully aware that circumstances do not allow me to resist him openly and to put him down with his followers, as it were with fire and faggot; otherwise I promise you I should soon quash this foolish plan of his for disseminating

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