During the season of his intense and enamoured pursuit of these absorbing studies, an incident occurred which produced some uneasiness both to teacher and disciple. Joe was seated, one evening, on a stool at the tailor's door, fervently engaged in his usual recreation,—the tailor meanwhile plying his needle,—when the clergyman of the village passing by, and observing the boy's studious deportment as something unusual, stepped towards him, and desired to know what he was so intent upon. Joe naturally felt some diffidence in returning an answer, and turned towards his friend on the shop-board with a glance that was meant to entreat his kind offices in the formation of a reply. But the tailor, to Joe's utter confusion, hung down his head doggedly, and struck his needle into a nether garment that lay upon his knees, with singular vehemence. In default of this expected help, Joe gave his two precious volumes, silently and resignedly, into the hands of the vicar,—a reverend gentleman held in deserved respect by his humble flock for the rigid purity of his morals, but of small skill in the waywardness of the human mind.

After a very few minutes' examination of the books, the spiritual overseer crimsoned with apparent displeasure, shook his head very expressively at the boy, and returning the volumes into his hands, assured him he was very sorry to see him so ill employed,—"for one of the books," he said, "contained only a foolish tale,—and the other was as whimsical a dream as ever ran through the brains of a fanatic." So saying, the well-intentioned, but ill-informed, teacher turned away,—leaving the boy to his own reflections, and the hot criticism of the tailor on what they had just heard from the village parson. These by no means led Joe into a coincidence with the vicar's way of thinking; and, whenever opportunity served, he was sure, as before, to be wandering, ideally, with the romantic and intrepid adventurer on the desert island, or to be found absorbed in the effort to penetrate the spiritual mysteries he had been directed to discover in the remaining volume whose enchanting imagery had captivated his young understanding. "A foolish tale,"—he could not conceive the narrative of the shipwrecked and eremite mariner to be: it was too full of sober earnestness, he thought, to be fantastic: it created before him a verisimilitude in which he himself lived all the wild yet truthful adventures of the cast-a-way seaman over again. And if he had not been told that the story of the Pilgrim was a parable, his simple and eager phantasy would have, primarily, set it down for a literal truth,—however after-reflection might have qualified his first conclusion.

But the accident of his evening's occupation having been scrutinised by the clergyman had not yet expended its influence on Joe's thoughts and feelings. On the first ensuing visit made by Dame Deborah to pay her tithes, she was solemnly admonished to forbid her godson's unprofitable studies, and to interdict his future association with the tailor. The good dame's reverence for her spiritual guide inclined her, at once, to yield obedience to his recommendation; more especially as she had for some time noted that the boy did not, as formerly, eagerly resort, at every leisure opportunity, to the old family Bible.

Accordingly, on her return home, she sharply reproved him for his neglect of the sacred book, and insisted that he should discontinue his communings at the tailor's cottage, and read no more of his books. Joe returned not a word in answer to the reproof of his aged mistress, for mingled gratitude, under a sense of her tender kindness, and reverence for her authority, rendered him incapable of disobeying her orders. He returned, dutifully, to the perusal of his first book; but though the rich variety of its histories, and the sublime interest of its matchless poetry, did not fail to keep alive his attention while he bent over its pages, yet, in the long hours of daily labour, his desire strongly thirsted for the more exciting intellectual draught of which he had lately partaken, and a dreary and monotonous feeling of weariness consumed his spirit. Dame Deborah little knew the evil she was doing when she bereaved her foster-child of his innocent pleasures. In the lapse of a few weeks she became sensible that it was not always wise to pursue the counsel even of the village parson too strictly.

Among the visiters to the dame's domicile, there had long been some who professed the tenets of Wesley,—the great heresiarch who drew his first breath in the Isle of Axholme. Of the peculiar doctrines set forth by this celebrated religious teacher, Joe, like Deborah herself, knew nought, save that the parson said they were "heresies." The sturdy intelligence of Dame Deborah led her to turn a deaf ear to all innovations in religion. She had been bred a strict church-woman, and never conceived the slightest idea of the fallibility of the orthodox and established Protestant faith. Her apprentices were not permitted to attend meeting or conventicle; and she steadfastly repelled and discouraged all attempts, on the part of her visiters, to introduce religious novelties in their daily gossip. But the restlessness and disquietude of his mind, now its faculties were once more without a fixed object of attachment, impelled Joe to discard, imperceptibly at first, the rules on religious matters, which had been tacitly observed by every member of the dame's household ever since he had entered it. With those who manifested a disposition to enlarge on the merits of the new religious system, he entered eagerly into discussion; and the result was, a determination to pay a secret attendance on one of the meetings of the sect, and thus form a judgment for himself.

A preacher of considerable rhetorical powers occupied the meeting-house pulpit, during his first stolen visits; and the skill with which passages from the book which had been his first source of instruction were quoted and applied, rivetted his attention and inflamed his fancy. The speaker gave illustrations of some of the patriarchal histories, and founded on them, and upon the sacrifices under the Mosaic law, such hypotheses as were exactly calculated to awe, and yet to lead captive, Joe's active imagination. To tell, in one sentence, the history of numberless hours of mental revolution, Joe brooded over these theories and their consequences while engaged at his daily labour, and repeated his secret visits to the meeting-house, until his young and earnest mind was filled with the one pervading idea that the only true happiness for the human soul was to be found in some sudden and ecstatic change to be received by what his new teachers called "an act of faith in the atonement."

From the period in which this conviction took entire hold of his judgment, the alteration in Joe's conduct was so decided as to become serious cause of alarm, even to the firm common-sense of Dame Deborah. He spurned the thought of any longer concealing his attendance at the sectarian meeting-house; and at every brief cessation from labour, as well as at prolonged hours in the night, and early in the morning, he was overheard in a weeping agony of prayer. His humble bed-room, an out-house, or the corner of a field, served the young devotee alike, for a place of "spiritual wrestling;" and whoever gave him an opportunity was sure to receive from Joe an earnest warning to "flee from the wrath to come!" Days,—weeks rolled on,—and the ardour of the lad's enthusiasm was approaching its meridian,—for he had given up himself so completely to its power, that not only did he consume the night more fully in prolonged acts of ascetic and almost convulsive devotion,—but his mind was so entirely wrapt up in the effort to "pray without ceasing,"—that he was scarcely conscious of what passed in the dame's cottage during the hours of work.

The visit of a "Revivalist" to the new religious community at Haxey thus found Joe fully prepared to hail the event as one fraught with unspeakable benefits. The narrow meeting-house was crammed with villagers attracted by the loud and unusual noises, and affected by the agonised looks and gestures, of their neighbours. Many of these stray visiters, in the language of the initiated, "came to scoff, but remained to pray." The "Revivalist" crept from form to form,—for the humble meeting-house was unhonoured with a pew,—urging the weeping and kneeling penitents to "press into mercy;" and pouring forth successive petitions for their salvation until the perspiration dropped from his brows like rain.

Joe was too intensely absorbed in the burning desire to obtain the immediate purification of his nature to be able to reflect, for a moment, on the question,—whether, in all this boisterous procedure, there was not an appalling violation of every principle of worship. And when the preacher approached the form at which he was kneeling, the workings of his spirit shook his whole frame with expectation. The preacher, at length, addressed him:—

"Believe, my young brother," said he, in a voice
naturally musical, and rendered wonderfully influential by enthusiasm,—"believe, for the pardon of your sins!"

"Oh! I would believe in a moment, if I felt they were pardoned!" cried Joe, in all the earnestness of excitement.

"Nay, but you must believe first!" rejoined the preacher; "only believe that your sins are pardoned, and you will feel your burden gone!"

The boy's reason, for a moment, asserted its own majesty, at the broaching of this wild doctrine; and he returned an instant answer to the preacher which would have confounded a less practised casuist.

"That would be pardoning myself," he said: "I want the Lord to pardon me: if believing that my sins were forgiven, while I feel they are not, would produce a real pardon, I need never have asked the Almighty to perform the work."

"Ah, my dear young brother!" quickly replied the preacher,—"I waited, as you have, no doubt, for weeks and weeks, expecting some miracle to be performed for me; but I found, at last, that there was no other refuge but believing. You must believe: that is your only way! All the direction that the word gives you is, 'Believe, and thou shalt be saved!' You have nothing else to do but to believe; and the moment you do believe—that moment you will be happy! Try it!"—and, so saying, the "Revivalist" hastened on to make proof of the efficacy of his wild notional catholicon upon the comfortless spirit of some less hesitating patient or penitent.

Joe's distress, when the preacher left him, became greater than ever. He felt fearful, on the one hand, of becoming a victim to self-deceit; and was horrified, on the other, with the terrible dread of losing his soul through the sin of unbelief. But the combat between his imagination and his understanding was one in which the former faculty had all the vantage-ground of his youthful age and his tendency to the marvellous,—and was immeasurably assisted by the overwhelming energy of his desire. The attainment of the new spiritual state had become his sole idea; and his reason succumbed beneath the combined strength of his wishes and the prurience of his ideality.

"The preacher says he has tried believing, and it has made him happy; therefore, I will try to believe," said Joe to himself,—becoming mentally desperate with distracting fears.

He did try; and the experiment produced,—as it could not fail to produce in such a mind, surrounded with such excitements,—a thrilling and ecstatic feeling; but yet, he doubted again, a few moments after! Thus, his intellect, all undisciplined and untutored as it had been, still revolted at the indignity of becoming the dupe of its own trickery. But the misery of doubt, and the pangs of spiritual condemnation, were more insupportable than the effort to impose upon himself the delusive assurance that he really possessed what he so ardently sought; and he, therefore, rushed to another act of desperate credence:—"I will believe! I do believe!" he wildly cried, at the full pitch of his voice, while the din and confusion of fifty persons praying aloud, at the same time, rendered his enthusiasm unnoticeable. At every new resurrection of his reason he thus drew afresh on the exorcism of his ideality, and allayed the troublous misgivings of the sterner faculty; so that, by the time the meeting was concluded, his reason had ceased to rebel,—and he went home, persuaded that he had attained the "new birth."

For some days, Joe dwelt in a frame of greater tranquillity than he had experienced since the commencement of his religious "awakenings." But the calm was a deceitful one; and was but the prelude to a more terrific tempest than had ever yet raged in the breast of the young victim to the ideal. Joe heard descriptions from the pulpit of the sectaries, of the unspeakable ecstasy of true believers; and reflected that his own feelings bore scarcely any resemblance to such highly-wrought pictures. Gradually, he felt it utterly impossible to conceal from himself the tormenting conviction that he had never received that amazing change of nature which he had been taught, so energetically and sanguinely, to expect as the fruit of his "act of faith." Instead of the "heavenly joy of assurance," which the preachers described,—Joe could not conceal from himself the fact that his nearest approaches to inward joy and calm,—fitful as they were,—resulted from the effort to assure himself; and this seemed too strained a mental state, he thought, to be termed "heavenly joy of assurance." Then, again, he was conscious that he had not the mental purity that he had heard described as one of the certain marks of regeneration. And this, soon, hurried him into a whirlpool of inward distraction;—for, instead of attributing the irritability and peevishness which now frequently agitated him to their real source,—the exhaustion of his nervous system by extreme asceticism,—the poor boy set them down, in his helpless and pitiable ignorance, to the inheritance of a nature that involved him, still, in the awful sentence of divine wrath. The tortures of disappointment thus augmented the distraction of doubt; and, at length, Joe was unable to quell his uneasiness for another moment by resorting to the act of self-delusion recommended by the "Revivalist,"—and called by him "the act of faith." Worn out, and jaded, with his daily, hourly, and almost momentary attempts to palm the fiction, anew, upon his understanding, Joe gave up the practice of "the act of faith" altogether, with a feeling of weariness and disgust and self-degradation too bitter for description!

The prostration of the youth's corporeal strength accompanied this distressing mental conflict. Dame Deborah began to watch the hectic flush on the cheek of her beloved foster-child with an aching heart; and, for the first time, entertained fears, that Time, so far from curing him of his errors, would only serve to mark his early grave. She would have interdicted his future attendance on the meetings of his religious associates; but the drooping state of his health deterred her from crossing his will, lest she should hasten the catastrophe which she began, in sadness and sorrow, to anticipate.

The good old dame finally resolved to try the efficacy of a change of scene and circumstances, as means of aiding the youth's recovery. Joe had never yet crossed the bounds of Haxey parish since he entered it; but the Dame being in the habit of attending the weekly market at Gainsborough, the nearest trading town, she determined that he should become a partner in her future journies. Her project was as sensible as it was benevolent. The new excitements created for the lad by these little expeditions could not fail to produce an issue in some degree salutary to his mind. And yet the relief he experienced might have been but temporary, had not a medicine,—seemingly hazardous,—but yet, signally well adapted for his disordered mental condition,—been opportunely disclosed from the womb of Circumstance,—the great productive source of new thinkings, new resolves, and new courses of action, which, in mockery of ourselves, we so often attribute to our own "will" and "intelligence."

Mounted on a stout grey mare, with his aged mistress behind, on an old-fashioned pillion-seat, Joe set forth on his first journey with emotions of natural curiosity; and, in the course of his progress, began to regain some degree of his constitutional cheerfulness. Eight miles of country, beheld for the first time, though its landscape was only of an ordinary and monotonous character, presented a world of objects for reflection to Joe's impressible spirit. The season was an early spring; and albeit the young equestrian felt some slight alarm when the animal sunk, beneath the superincumbent weight of himself and his companion, well-nigh up to the saddle-skirts, in the miry sloughs that intervened between Haxey and the Trent,—yet the view of the face of nature, smilingly outspread around him, fully compensated, he felt, for these occasional drawbacks on the pleasure of the journey. The few verdant meads which were scattered among the dull fallows looked as lovely, Joe thought, as they could look in any other part of England; while the cottages, in their array of honeysuckles, were attired as blushingly and beautifully, he thought, as if reared in the sunny climes of the South.

Midway in the journey, Joe and his aged mistress dismounted to cross the Trent,—and four more miles brought them to Gainsborough. On arriving at the market-town, the good old dame, somewhat to the lad's surprise, presented him with half-a-crown,—a sum he had never, till then, possessed. After a brief preface of prudence, she informed him that he was at liberty to spend the next three hours in looking at the rarities in the market, in walking about the town, or in any mode that he thought would most highly gratify his curiosity. Joe set forth, anticipating sights which might afford a passing gratification; but in the course of the first hour became immovably attracted by a display of merchandise, from which the rustic traffickers of the market, too generally, turned away with indifference,—a spacious stall of old books.

The image of a homely country lad, clad in a rustic garb, and shod with heavy-laced boots, standing by that old book-stall, presented a very uninteresting spectacle to the market people at Gainsborough. The butter-women brushed rudely past him, grumbling at the awkwardness with which he obstructed their crowded path; and the hucksters roughly cursed him, half-overturning the absorbed youth in their haste to forestall each other in cheapening the produce of the village dairies. Yet Joe was wont to refer to the hour during which he looked over the tattered treasures of the travelling bookseller as the most important in his whole life. He laid out the first half-crown he had ever possessed in purchasing the translated work of a French philosopher, without knowing, for many months after, that the author of the book bore an opprobious designation among theologians. At successive periods of his after-history, Joe attributed this occurrence to the operation of the inevitable laws of necessity, to accident, to permissive Providence: but, without entering into the labyrinth of his progressive trains of thought, or solving the question of the validity of any of his conclusions,—suffice it to say, that the purchase of that book produced a sequel of the most intense interest to the young and undirected inquirer.

Joe had but just paid his half-crown into the hand of the bookseller, and buttoned the volume in the breast of his coat, when his ears were stricken by the boisterous tones of a bawling pedlar. With remarkable elongation of face, the man was proclaiming the wondrous contents of a pamphlet that he held in his hand, copies of which he was offering for sale, "amazingly cheap," as he avowed, to the staring by-standers. The stroller rapidly gleaned coppers among the wonder-stricken butter-women, who forgot their baskets in the serious interest awakened by the pedlar's tale; and Joe could not refrain from noting the comments which the simple people made upon the story.

"Here is a true and faithful account," reiterated the pedlar, with all his power of lungs, "of the awful apparition of a young woman to her sweetheart, three weeks after her death,—warning him, in the most solemn manner, to forsake his evil ways, and not to deceive others, as he had deceived her,—and foretelling to him that he would die that day fortnight,—and then vanishing in a flash of fire, leaving a smell of brimstone behind her! And how the young man took to his bed immediately after, and died at the time his sweetheart had foretold,—making a godly confession of his sins on his death-bed. All which happened," concluded the pedlar, with a look of solemn assurance that went at once to the hearts of his unsuspecting audience,—"but one month ago, in the county of Cornwall;—and here are the names of ten creditable parishioners of the place, who heard the young man's confession, and have set their names as witnesses of the truth of the circumstance, that it might be a warning to young men to repent, and not to deceive their sweet-hearts,—and all this you have for the small charge of one penny!"

"The Lord ha' marcy on us, Moggy," cried a young and blooming butter-woman to her elderly neighbour, as they leant over the handles of their baskets, aghast with wonder:—"what an awful thing it must ha' been to see that young woman come from the deead!"

"It must, indeed, Dolly," replied the older gossip, shaking her head: "it's enough to mak one tremmle to think on't! Some folks say that there's no sich thing as a ghooast,—but I'm sewer I wouldn't be so wicked as to say so."

"And she vanished in a flash o' fire and brimstone, did she, maister?" said Dolly to the pedlar, as she tendered her penny.

"That she did, pretty maid!" quickly answered the vender, with a look of roguish seriousness: "take the book home, and let your sweetheart read it to you, if you can't read it yourself; and you'll find that what I have said is all true."

"I hope it is, maister, for they're solemn things to joke about!" remarked a staid-looking matron, who was taking out her spectacles to read the veracious story.

"True as the Gospel!" exclaimed the ready pedlar: "I was born and brought up in the parish, and know every one of the creditable yeomen who have signed the young man's confession."

"Yo may ha' been born there," interjected a Sheffield huckster, with a satirical grin; "but it's many a moile off!"

The pedlar strode rapidly away to a distant part of the market.

"Why, you dooant doot what th' man says, do you, Roger?" asked a fair Axholmian butter-maiden of the huckster.

"Daht!" replied the Sheffielder, in his own dialect; "I al'ays daht loies, mun! But come, lass! tak t'other hawp'ny a pahnd, and bring t' basket along wi' thee!"

"Marcy on us!" exclaimed the butter-woman in spectacles, as the rude huckster left the market; "you Sheffield fellow'll hev to see a ghooast before he believes there is one! What an alarming accoont this is, to be sewer!"

"Would you be so kind," said Joe to the elderly dame who uttered this latter exclamation, "as to let me look at the account for a few minutes? I will return it to you again, very soon."

"Why, yes,—I'll let you look at it," answered the woman, scanning him from head to foot; "and I hope you'll take a lesson from the book, and never act so wickedly as this young man did."

It was not mere curiosity which prompted the lad to ask the loan of the pedlar's tract. He felt certain that he had glanced at a similar tale in a volume of old pamphlets on the bookseller's stall, but a few minutes before. After a short search, he found the volume again, and comparing the stories, saw that they were the same, to a letter, save that the copy on the stall affirmed the apparition to have taken place in Westmoreland, more than half-a-century before. While his thoughts were all in a tumult at this strange discovery, the bookseller, who was attentive to the behaviour of his customers, stept up, and addressed him in a whisper.

"You look surprised, young man," he said, while Joe gazed at the sinister expression in his countenance; "but I knew it was all an old story, though the fellow was making such a noise about it. Say nothing about it, however,—for all trades must live,—and most people would think one tale as good and as true as the other!"

The bookseller was only just in time with his precept of caution; for Joe's gathering indignation at the pedlar's imposture would have impelled him, the next moment, to break through his boyish bashfulness, and proclaim his discovery aloud, in the ears of the surrounding butter-women:—a proceeding which, in lieu of thanks, would have, no doubt, drawn down upon his head a storm of wrath from their disturbed superstition. Feeling unspeakably confused with his reflections, Joe now hastily returned the volume to its place on the stall; and thanking the kind butter-woman for her loan of the ghost-story, gave it carefully into her hands. He then hasted away towards the little inn where he was to meet Dame Deborah, partly under an impression that his hours of liberty were near their expiry,—but much more with the persuasion that he would be able, as he went along, being no longer surrounded with the market-din, to disentangle the web of conflicting thought into which the slight incidents just narrated had cast him.

The pedlar's falsehood and audacity,—and the whispered caution of the bookseller, whom Joe felt strongly inclined to characterise as an abettor of imposture and knavery,—the credulity of the butter-women,—and the gaping wonder manifested by the listening crowd,—formed a mass of striking corroborations,—a sort of powerful running commentary on what he had hastily read in the volume he had just purchased. The incidents in the little market, in fact, opened to the lad's inexperienced mind a glimpse of the melancholy truth that man and the multitude have been prone to superstition in all ages, and have eagerly received frauds which have been imposed upon them, throughout all time, by the craft of interested and organised parties; or, where these were wanting, that man has forged deceptions for himself, through the strength of his own wondering faculty. The end to which these incipient reasonings would lead him was not, and could not, then, be manifest to him; or Joe, scarcely rid of his fanatical incubus, would have revolted from them with horror. It was merely the dawn of thoughts which were waiting to break in upon his mind with all the power and effulgence of new truth. But, whatever might be the tendency of these commencing reasonings, the progress of them was speedily arrested by the beginning of the journey homewards.

Joe, with the good old dame behind him, rode as far as the Trent ferry, at Stockwith, in company with sundry rustic frequenters of the weekly market. The gossip chiefly consisted of a recapitulation of the prices of corn and flax, and poultry, and pigs, and butter,—until the re-introduction of the ghost-story, at what time Joe and his foster-mother, with the rest, were seated in the ferry-boat, and were recrossing the Trent.

"Well,—it's an awful accoont, Maister Gawky!" exclaimed Diggory Dowlson, the rough old ferryman, after an Axholmian farmer had briefly recounted the pedlar's tale; "but I've heeard many sich i' my time,—thof I nivver seed nowt mysen."

"And the Lord send I nivver may!" ejaculated Betty Bogglepeep, a tottering old wife of Owston, who had, the day before, as she said, in the course of her gossip, chopped off the head of her best black hen, because she crowed like a cock:—"the Lord send I nivver may, for it maks me queer to think a thowt o' sich things; and I'm sewer if I woz to see 'em, it would freeten me oot o' my wits!"

"Hold thy foolish tongue, prithee!" chimed in her loving husband, whose bravery seemed chiefly owing to his late fellowship with Sir John Barleycorn, at the market:—"why does ta talk aboot being freeten'd at shadows?"

"Nay, nay, Davy, it's to no use puttin' it off i' that way," interjected the old ferryman, taking up the cause of the old woman and the ghost, with the fervour of gallantry and faith united;—"depend on't, though deead folks may come like shadows, yet it's a fearful seeght to see 'em!"

"No doot, no doot, Diggory!" replied the farmer, "but seeing 'em's all—thoo knaws!"

The farmer meant this for an arch sally, but his companions in the boat were not in the vein to relish his humour.

"What do you think aboot sich solemn things, Dame Thrumpkinson?" asked the old ferryman, turning to the corner of the boat where Deborah seemed buried in reflection;—"you sit and say not a word, all this time. Give us your thowts, dame, for ye've more sense than all of us, put together!"

"I don't give heed to every fool's tale about such things," replied Dame Deborah, in her usual grave tone; "but I've serious reason for believing that the dead often know what the living are doing."

"Why, did ye ivver see owt spirit'al, Dame Thrumpkinson?" instantly asked half-a-dozen voices, while twice as many eyes glared upon the aged Deborah with a gaze as wonder-stricken as that of a nest of owls suddenly awakened by daylight.

"Nay, neighbours, nay!" replied the dame, drooping her head, and speaking in a tone of melancholy tenderness;—"do not ask me further. I think we ought to keep sacred the secrets of the dead that have been near and precious to us!"

The manner of Dame Deborah's reply was so affecting, and its intimate meaning, though only guessed by her rude auditors, seemed to command so deep a respect from their simple feelings, that the subject was immediately dropped; and the whole party remained silent until the boat had touched the western bank of the river.

Some of the company now took a direction for Owston and Butterwick, and such parts of the country as lay on the banks of the Trent; while the remnant, who were bound for the more central parts of the isle, being more strongly mounted than Joe and his aged mistress, and many of them having a greater distance to reach ere night-fall, sped on before, after bidding their deeply-respected acquaintance, Dame Deborah, a hearty and kindly farewell. The journey home was nearly ended before the dame broke silence, her mind seeming deeply intent on thoughts which the conversation in the boat had awakened within her; and when she addressed her foster-son, it was but briefly, though kindly.

"I hope the ride will do thee no harm, bairn," she said, in a tone of the gentlest affection; "and how did ta spend the half-crown?"

"I bought a book with it, dame," Joe answered.

"A book!" said she, pleasantly:—"well, well, it's like thee: but, may be, thou could not ha' spent it better. And what sort of a book is it, bairn?"

"Quite on a new subject," Joe replied, scarcely knowing how to describe the book to the dame's plain understanding.

"A new subject!" she repeated, with a gentle laugh;—"well, well, I hope it will do thee more good than some of thy old subjects." And then, as if fearful of bringing back distressful thoughts to the heart of one over whom she yearned so tenderly, the good old dame permitted the journey to end without further remark. Joe would fain have entreated an explication of the mysterious conclusion given by his aged protectress to the conversation in the boat; but there was something too sombre in her mood of mind, at that time, he thought, to permit his hazarding any reference to such a subject.

Almost insensibly, to himself, Joe's opinions on religious matters began to undergo an entire change within a short period succeeding his acquaintance with the work of the French philosopher. The arguments of the book were conducted in too covert a mode for one, so little skilled in the arts of disguise, to be able to detect its real tendency in the outset. The blandishments of the writer's style captivated his taste; and the boldness with which he saw the doctrines of natural liberty asserted, took strong possession of his judgment. Degraded as his reason had felt itself to be while enslaved to the teachings of fanaticism, there was no wonder that he felt the awakening of a desire for mental independence, and listened willingly to the voice of an advocate for the native dignity of man's understanding. Appended to the volume, which now began to engross his leisure hours, was a treatise, entitled "The Law of Nature." Joe perused its precepts and digested its reasonings, until he believed he had committed a lamentable error by wearying his flesh and spirit with acts of ascetic devotion,—and resolved he would address himself to the practice of the elevated moral virtue which the French writer asserted to be easy and natural to man when brought within the influence of instruction.

The native activity of his intellect prevented a prolonged abidance on the mere threshold of opinion: a few months rolled over, and Joe's convictions took a current which they kept for some years. In truth, the formation of his conclusions was hastened by the very circumstance of his being compelled to pursue his doubts and inquiries in silence. No one around him understood the questions with which his mind was grappling; and the answers which his own judgment gradually gave them, would, he was sensible, create a general horror if broadly proclaimed in the hearing of the simple people by whom he was surrounded.

His faith once shaken in the rules of practice prescribed by the sectarian teachers, since he knew no other way of interpreting the experimental doctrines of the Scriptures than that they pursued,—his reason became gradually distasted with the Scriptures themselves,—and he easily adopted the arguments against the Bible contained in his favourite volume of French philosophy. He began to suspect, and, at length, boldly concluded, that the Jehovah of the Hebrews was, indeed, the mere mythological fiction of a rude and barbarous age,—a Deity scarcely more godlike in his character and attributes than the savage Moloch of the Ammonites. To class the garden of primeval innocence, and the forbidden fruit, and the tempting serpent, and the lapse of the first human pair, among the allegories which, he now learned, the ancient nations were wont to adopt in order to embody their conceptions of things otherwise difficult of narration, was a still easier step. The Prophecies, he thought, were evidently attributable to that prolific Oriental faculty which gave birth and authority to the pagan oracles; and the Miracles, as events opposed to general experience, were to be at once discarded from the catalogue of historic facts, by every true philosopher.

Amid these rapid and decided changes of sentiment, Joe sometimes wondered that he felt none of the inward terror and the "stings of conscience," which he had so perpetually been taught to regard as the sure avenging vicegerents of a Deity, in the breasts of those who dared to doubt revealed truth. That he was tormented by none of these appalling visitings, was another proof to his mind of the fallacy of his rejected teachers. He was conscious that, in his conclusions, whether right or wrong, he was sincere: he was satisfied that his new mental condition was far preferable to the spirit-degrading and wearisome slavery he had so recently shaken off; and he had not, yet, sufficiently probed the depths of his own heart to know that his self-gratulation was also aided by the pride of thinking diversely from the mass of his fellows. The ghost story at the market, and its accompanying circumstances, often ran through his memory, and served, not a little, to enforce his persuasion that the mass of mankind were the dupes of superstition; and, at the close of every similar train of reflection, he could not refrain from indulging a self-complacent feeling on his having, himself, thrown off what he gradually deemed to be a blind and implicit trust in fables under the delusive guise of Divine inspiration.

Glowing with the conception that he had hitherto been living in a dream of multiform illusions, but had now broken it, Joe resolved to "gird up the loins of his mind" for the laborious and persevering pursuit of solid knowledge; and said within himself,—"I will henceforth converse with experience, and not with imagination: I will cleave to fact and not to phantasy." The weekly journies to Gainsborough with his aged mistress, which were uninterruptedly kept up from their commencement, afforded him what he conceived to be ample means for carrying this resolve into successful practice. And so, in some measure, it proved; for, by an exchange of volumes with the travelling bookseller, and the casual assistance of a few shillings from his indulgent godmother, he reaped an unremitting supply for his intellectual appetite,—a faculty which rapidly "grew with what it fed on." He eagerly devoured whatever came within his reach in the shape of history or chronicle;—he sought industriously to acquire the rudiments of real science;—and strove to sharpen and fortify his reason by the perusal of ancient tomes of logic and philosophy. For records of travel he craved with an incontrollable passion: a feeling which was, in reality, but a revivification of the ardour awakened in his boyish mind by the adventures of the shipwrecked Crusoe. But the fervid desire he once cherished, to penetrate vast deserts and visit unknown realms, was now transmuted, by the influence of his more sober associations and habits of reflection, into a prevalent wish to see the world of men; and the prospect of a new and wider field of observation to be entered upon at the close of his humble servitude began thenceforth to pervade his daily musings, and, eventually, to take a shape in his purposes.

The secrecy which Joe was compelled to observe on religious subjects was a restraint through which he would gladly have broken; but there was not one to whom he could communicate his sceptical views without fear of an explosion of alarm. Observance of caution being repulsive to his feelings, it was, therefore, natural that his real sentiments should occasionally escape. Only, however, when the gross superstitions of his daily associates excited very strong disgust within him, did Joe utterly forget his rules of caution. His fellow-apprentices were in little danger of imbibing heretical opinions, from the fact of their understandings being too uninformed to apprehend the real drift of his thinkings when expressed. But Dame Deborah pondered on some of these hasty expressions of opinion, until her aged heart often ached with the suspicion that all was not right in the new religious state of her foster-son. Yet, when she marked the tenour of his daily conduct,—his inviolable regard for truth,—his steady rebuke of every thing coarse and unfeeling,—when she listened to the language in which his conceptions, even on ordinary subjects, were uttered,—and when she contrasted his manly cheerfulness with his former gloom and despondency, a confidence arose that dispelled her temporary doubts of the correctness of his heart, and her bosom glowed with pride at the remembrance that she had adopted him for her own.

During the concluding five years of his apprenticeship, Joe had piled together in his mind, though after no prescribed rule, much knowledge of a multifarious character. The acquirement of one of the noble languages of antiquity was his severest unassisted struggle during this probationary course; but it was a strife from which he reaped the richest after-pleasures. The facts he gleaned from history were stored up faithfully in his memory, not merely as chronological items, but as texts for fertile and profitable reflection; while he assiduously strove to catch the rays of such new truths as were perceptible in his more limited reading of ethics, and to evince their spirit in his thoughts and actions. Thus, without written pattern or oral instructor, the orphan apprentice endeavoured, by the selection of such materials as lay within his grasp, to build up, within himself, a mental fabric of seemly architecture. But, to cut short observations that are already too protracted,—Joe, with all his efforts after mental discipline, was, at twenty-one, what all the lonely self-educated must be at that age, often the slave of his own hypothesis when he believed himself to be following the most legitimate deductions from an authenticated fact,—oftener a visionary than a true philosopher.

On the evening preceding the day of Joe's freedom, the good old Deborah, sitting at her own door, presented a picture almost identical with the sketch attempted at the opening of this brief recital. Except the deeper furrows on her face, there was no token that age had strengthened its empire over her. The fine old woman sat as erect in her arm-chair as she had sat there sixteen years before. Her eyes also beamed with the same wakefulness and kindliness on her neighbours, as they passed by, from their labour, and tendered her a respectful recognition,—for she was at peace with all, and beloved by all; and while the light vapour curled and wreathed, as it floated slowly upward from her pipe, and then melted, above her head, into the invisibility of space, it seemed a type of the serene and healthful course she had trod in her uprightness, that was, in due time, to receive its quiet change into the unseen but felicitous future. The solicitude she had, for seventeen years, increasingly felt respecting the welfare of her foster-son,—now the youth was within a few hours of being at age,—filled her heart so completely, that she could do nothing as she sat in her customary seat, that evening, but con over the probable consequences of Joe's emancipation from the thraldom of apprenticeship, which was to take place the following noon.

"Well, I'm truly thankful," soliloquised the peaceful septuagenarian, puffing away the clouds from her pipe with growing energy, and now and then ending her sentences in an audible tone, through the strength of earnestness,—"that the Lord moved my heart to take care of this poor motherless and faytherless bairn. It's Him, I'm sensible, that inclines us to do any good,—for there's little that's good in us by natur'. I've no reason to repent what I did; for though the dear lad has a few whirligig notions, yet I'm sure there's a vast deal o' good in him. He doesn't like church over well,—but then the parson grows old and stupid, like me; and it's not likely that a young fellow that's grown so very book-larnt as our Joe, should be fond o' spending his time in listening to an old toothless parson's dull drawling. Neighbour Toby Lackpenny says that the lad's ower nat'ral; and not abstrac' enough, in his way o' thinking; but, for my part, I think he's far ower abstrac' already! At least, I hope he'll grow wiser, in a few years, than to say that the dead never appear to the living. He may talk in that way to green geese like himself, but not to me. Didn't I see my own dear Barachiah, for three nights together, stand in the moonlight, at the foot of my bed, while I was weeping sore for the loss of him?—The Lord forgive me, that I should have grieved so sinfully as to have disturbed his rest! But that's past and gone, and many a deep trouble besides, thank Heaven above! And now, here's this lad. I wished, often, that I had one o' my own;—but it was not God's will so to bless my poor Barachiah and me,—and how could I have loved a child of my own better than I do love this poor bairn? But I was thinking about what I must do for him before he leaves me,—for he's long talked o' seeing the world when he was out of his time;—and, I make no doubt, he'll want to be off to-morrow, as soon as noontide makes him free. I must say a few words to him about it, to-night,—and yet, I feel so chicken-hearted about his going, that I hardly know how to speak to him."

The good dame's irregular soliloquy was put an end to by the voices of her younger apprentices, who were drawing homewards for the night. Her foster-son soon afterwards made his appearance,—book in hand, as usual, at the end of his evening's walk at the conclusion of labour. The supper-table was spread,—the meal ended,—and Joe and the aged dame were speedily left the sole occupants of the little kitchen. Joe had retaken up his book, and had been buried for more than half-an-hour in deep attention to its contents,—the hour was growing late;—and Dame Deborah, after many inward struggles, began, in a very tremulous tone, to address her foster-child on the most important theme in her recent soliloquy.

"Joe," said she, "I was thinking, since you will be of age, and a freeman, to-morrow——" and there her emotion compelled her to hesitate; but although Joe had laid down his book to attend to his aged protectress, he felt too much agitated to take up the observation where the dame had left it.

"I reckon you are in the same mind about leaving me, Joe," resumed the aged woman, trembling with extreme feeling, and uttering the sentence with a cadence that sounded like the key-note of desolation;—"but I wish you to say what you are intending to do when I give you your indentures, to-morrow at noon."

"My kind mother,—for a true mother you have been to me," replied the youth, forcibly subduing his feelings, and addressing Dame Deborah with a degree of animation and a fervency of look she had seldom witnessed in him,—"it is high time I became acquainted with the world. Believe me,—I do not desire to leave you through ingratitude for your unremitted kindness to a poor orphan,—but I feel I am fitted for other scenes than these. More than all, man is the great book I wish to read; and the few humble pages of his history which lie around me here I have turned over, till I am weary of the writing. I shall be useless to you if I remain, for I shall never be content, or at rest. I go from you, for a season; but never, never, dear mother, shall I cease to think of you!"

Joe bowed his head, and covered his face with his hands, in deep emotion; and the dame, moved utterly beyond self-possession, arose with trembling haste, and clasping her foster-child in her aged arms, kissed his fair forehead, while the unwonted tears trickled down her furrowed cheeks.

"My dear bairn! my pratty bairn! my noble bairn!" exclaimed she with a bounding heart, as she stood over him in affectionate admiration.

Joe wept, in spite of his efforts to master tears,—but, at length, recovered sufficient self-possession to lead his aged protectress back to her chair, and to recommence the conversation.

"You will consent, then, I hope, to let me go, kind mother," he said, still holding her hand.

"The Lord's will be done, bairn!" replied Deborah, in a tone of calm and natural piety. "Yes," added she, with resumed cheerfulness, and in her customary firm under-tone,—"thou shal' go, Joey, lad! and thy pocket shall not be empty, nayther!"

"Nay, dear mother," answered the high-minded lad,—"I have already burdened you too heavily, and I will never consent to rob you of the refuge of your old age:—remember, I have hands and health, and can work for my own support."

"God forbid thou should'st be idle!" answered the dame;—"for idleness leads to sin and crime, while honest labour needs never be ashamed. But a few guineas in thy pocket will do thee no harm, an' thou husbands 'em well. More than that, 'There's no knowing what a man may have to meet when he leaves home,' thou know'st is an old saying, and thou'lt find it so apt, that thou'lt think on't when thou has left me, mayhap."

A calm and provident conversation ensued, during which Joe agreed to accept a purse of twenty spade-aces from the good old dame, after she had assured him it would by no means straiten her means either of subsistence or plenty.

"And now, dear Joey," said the kind old woman, "let me persuade thee to throw aside some o' thy whirligig notions. Do not contradict every body thou meets who are so old-fashioned as to believe what their forefathers taught 'em. More than all, Joey," continued Deborah, with some warmth, "I'm shocked at your stubbornness in trying to deny what the Scripter says about foul spirits:—the Lord keep us from them!—and, especially at your daring to threap so stoutly that the dead never come again!"

"Indeed, dame," replied Joe, in a tone of conciliation and respect, "I never denied these things out of stubbornness, but because they are opposed to all experience:—who, and where, is the person, now living, that has really seen a ghost?"

"Who—and where—Joe?" echoed Deborah, with a strange and solemn look.

Joe felt amazed that he had not, before he had asked the last question, called to mind the dame's serious observations in the ferry-boat, five years before, and sat gazing upon the changed countenance of his aged mistress with intense earnestness.

"Joe," continued Deborah, after a deep pause succeeding her emphatic echo of the youth's sceptical question,—"I thought to have kept what I am about to reveal of the dead as a solemn secret, and to have buried it with me, in my grave; but to save thee from foul unbelief about such solemn things, I will reveal it to thee.

"Wedded husband and wife could not live in greater happiness than my dear Barachiah and I," continued the aged woman, in a voice faltering with affection:—"the stroke which took him from me raised a murmuring spirit within me, and day after day, as I moved about this dwelling, my rebellious heart dared to say that He who lives on high, and does all things well, had stricken me in wrath that I deserved not. My neighbours would often attempt to soothe me; and some of them treated my sorrow with lightness, and said, I would soon forget my dead husband, and seek another. But they who uttered this mockery little knew me. Added days and nights only served to increase my grief; and, at length, I began to watch through the night, until my strength failed, and, as I watched, I prayed, in sinful stubbornness and presumption, that my Maker would either take me away to join the dear being that I loved, or bring him once more to me. It was done unto me according to my wicked prayer;—for, one midnight, about ten months after my dear Barachiah's death, as I sat up in bed, with the burning desire in my heart to see my husband once more, and giving full vent to my rebelliousness by the utterance of words which I remember with horror,—behold! he whom I had lost stood at the foot of my bed, but with such a piercing look of reproof as I never saw him wear when alive. He wore a garment of lovely light, and I could have delighted for ever to gaze on him, had it not been for that severe look which ran through my heart, and told me I had done wrong. I sank away, senseless. When I came to myself, and the vision was gone, I vowed that I would never pray more as I had done that night. But, my will was perverse; and, on the next night, I was tempted again to desire, and then to pray, that I might, yet once more, see my departed husband. I was punished as before;—but such was my wickedness, or my weakness, I cannot tell which, that I prayed yet a third time, as presumptuously as ever, and was visited by another and still more reproving apparition of him God gave to me, and whom He had taken away. The next morning I was unable to attend to my daily cares, and was compelled to send for a physician. I took medicines, but I think they helped less to heal me, than did the kind counsel of the aged man who administered them, and who is now in his grave. I prayed no more the prayer of the presumptuous, but asked for resignation, till He who has promised to be a husband to the widow, filled my bosom therewith."

Deborah ceased, as it seemed, disabled by the fullness of her heart, from prolonging her narrative. Joe had not only listened to her revelation with the profoundest attention, but felt an irresistible awe under the recital. Deborah had never risen so much above her ordinary self, in his eyes, as while she was thus unbosoming a secret she had kept for years. Her attitude, and the expression of her features, her tone of voice, and the very words in which she conveyed her solemn story, indicated an unusual frame of mind, and formed a combined and undeniable proof that the utterer of such unearthly news was as fully persuaded, as of her own existence, that she was delivering truths.

Joe's strong affection for his aged protectress, and his reverence for her sterling uprightness, contributed to fix his mind more absorbingly on what he heard. The relation of the apparition of Barachiah Thrumpkinson, although authenticated solely by this solemn averment of his aged relict, thus made a stronger impression on the faith of the youthful listener than any former narrative of the supernatural, written or oral. The united reasonings of five years seemed to be shaken to atoms; and Joe remained answerless, with his eyes fixed on the floor. Nor had his reasoning faculty re-asserted its dominion, ere the aged dame rose, and looking parentally upon him, while she uttered her usual evening farewell, "Good night, bairn!" took the way to her rustic couch.

Joe returned the salutation with a faltering voice, and hasted, likewise, to seek his place of repose; but sleep was long ere it visited his eyes, even when he had overcome, in some degree, the strange over-awed feeling which had crept over him while listening to Deborah's story. Amid the solemn stillness of the night, Memory ran through her beaten paths, and Imagination arose, and mingled therewith the scenes of the future. The great event of to-morrow,—the greatest, hitherto, in the life of the humble shoemaker's apprentice,—soon dissipated all other excitements. Would he be happier when he was free, and had entered the world, as a personal observer, instead of learning its varied character from books? Something whispered a doubt. But would he not be wiser? Yes; that, he thought, was certain. He would be able, by the practice of close observation, to compare men with each other: he would have the opportunity of trying, as upon a touch-stone, the truth or fallacy of the peculiar hypotheses he had framed: he would learn to read the human heart. And then he thought of the probability, nay, certainty, of his finding some kindred mind, but farther advanced in great truths, that would be able to set him right where he was wrong; who would teach him the true secret of perfecting his moral nature, and would lead him on to the acquirement of intellectual stores, of the very existence of which, it might be that he had scarcely a faint conception,—thoughts that enfevered him with pleasurable anticipation.

Then, reverting to the past, he reminded himself of his orphan condition, of the gratitude he owed his affectionate foster-mother, and of the kind and parental assistance she had offered him, although he was about to desert her. Often he felt the melting mood come over him so conqueringly, that he was all but resolved to tell the aged dame, in the morning, that he would remain with her, and try to comfort her old age. And then he thought of the many sensible lessons she had given for his future conduct in the world,—till, wearied out with the variety of his thoughts, and physically, as well as mentally exhausted, he sunk to slumber.

Joe awoke early, after a dreamless and refreshing sleep, and again his mind laboured with its difficulties about Deborah's relation of the apparition; but its labour was vain. The more he reasoned the greater were his difficulties. The healthful effect of these baffled and perplexed thinkings upon Joe's intellect was, the deterring of its powers from precipitant and immature conclusions,—the throwing of its energies back upon fresh and deeper inquiry,—and the in-fixing of a humiliating consciousness that, after all his struggles in pursuit of knowledge, he scarcely knew any thing yet as he ought to know it. Thus, his conscious ignorance for the present was really beneficial to him; and when the voice of his affectionate mistress was heard summoning him to breakfast, he stept down the ladder, shaking his head at himself for a conceited puppy, and applying homeward to his own case the significant rebuke—

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Joe,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

Labour, the honest dame declared, should not be thought of, in her house, the day that Joe was of age,—according to her reckoning by guess,—and free. And she bustled about, as old as she was, to place her best earthen jugs, filled with mead and ale, in goodly array, on the white and well-scoured table, that every visiter might drink the young freeman's health; and she hasted to prepare a large plumb-pudding, and other homely eates, for dinner,—all the while holding up her head, and striving to look as blythe and merry as if she had been in her teens.

At length, the hour of parting came; and when Joe rose and took up his hat,—and his fellow-apprentices that were,—but a few hours before,—took each a bundle to accompany him a few miles on the way,—Dame Deborah's aged frame shook violently, and the tears streamed, unchecked, down her time-worn face.

"God speed thee, my dear bairn!" she cried,—"and help thee to take heed of thy ways, that no harm may befall thee!"

Joe felt completely unmanned, and mingled his tears with those of his beloved and revered benefactress, while he bent to receive her parting benediction.

The orphan saw his foster-mother no more alive. When, three years afterwards, he again entered that little village of Haxey, it was to attend the interment of Dame Deborah in the same churchyard to which she had conducted him to witness the burial of his mother. And what an altered man was Joe! A residence in the manufacturing districts had unveiled to him a world of misery—contention—competition—avarice—oppression—and suffering—and famine—that he had never supposed to exist! As for his religious opinions they changed, and changed again,—amidst varnished, high-sounding professors of sanctity, on the one hand,—and starving thousands, who in the pangs of despair charged God with the authorship of their wretchedness, on the other. Had Joe been asked, ten years afterwards, what were now his religious sentiments, he would have answered:—"I am wearied with talking about creeds, and I am trying,—by relieving misery as much as I can, and diffusing all the happiness I can,—to show that I believe all men to be my brethren: I think that is the best religion."

TOBY LACKPENNY THE PHILOSOPHICAL:

A DEVOTEE OF THE MARVELLOUS.

Among the most remarkable events which took place in Haxey, towards the close of the last century, was the settlement, in that ancient village, of curious Toby Lackpenny, the philosophical tailor. Toby's coat was usually out at the elbows, but he had long held, throughout the whole Isle of Axholme, a high reputation as a man of deep and singular learning. His "library" was the theme of marvel unceasing to his plain and unsophisticated customers; and though it consisted but of forty or fifty ragged volumes, it constituted a wealth that the philosophical Toby, himself, priced above rubies. To this treasury of wisdom he, nightly, resorted, with ever-fresh delight, as regularly as his manual labour closed; and many an ecstatic hour did he live over his books in the sweet stillness and solitude of early morning. There were tractates on the whole circle of science, in his bibliographical collection, Toby asserted; for, like all other great philosophers, he aspired to be an encyclopedist in knowledge: but, up to the time at which we are commencing this brief record of Toby's history, it was simply, by his mastery of the erudite pages of Nicholas Culpepper,—and of a very ancient volume comprising treatises on Astrology, Geomancy, Palmistry, and other kindred occult studies,—that Toby had won for himself, throughout the length and breadth of Axholmian land, so high a character for wisdom. None could doubt the profundity of Toby's acquirements; for whoever took a wild flower to his door was sure to be told its name,—its healing virtues,—and the names of its presiding influences, the planets and zodiacal constellations,—those celestial potencies from which, he assured the visiter, every herb and flower derived their medicinal virtues. And, oh! the decoctions, and the salves, and the ointments, and the plasters, and the poultices, and the liniments, and the electuaries, and the simples, and the compounds, that were made by the old women of Haxey, and all Axholme, by Toby Lackpenny's oracular direction! And then the exultant looks and honied words with which some would return thanks to Toby, and assure him all their tooth-ache, or head-ache, or elbow-ache, had vanished, like magic, by their diligent attention to his prescription; and then the reach and shrewdness he displayed in answering such as complained that his advice had not been of the service they had apprehended, namely, that they had not plucked the flower in the hour when its own planet presided,—or they had not boiled it before the Moon rose,—and she was in opposition to Jupiter, the lord of the plant wormwood,—or some other convincing reason why the device had not succeeded.

Toby's advancement in the "astral science," also brought him an increasing number of customers,—though the naked condition of his elbows told the fact that this growing knowledge was somewhat profitless in a substantial sense. Nevertheless, every successive day strengthened his confidence that he would soon be "even with Booker, or Lilly, or Gadbury, or any of 'em that his grandfather used to talk about;"—for he had also been eager, in his day, to be able to prognosticate future events by tracing "the stars in their courses." And, now, as surely as the evening returned, Toby might be seen at his own door, seated on a low stool, drawing astrological diagrams on a fragment of slate, and placing the symbols of the planets and signs of the zodiac in due position in the "table of houses."

The vagueness which Toby found to be so characteristic of what astrologers call the "rules of judgment" often brought the zealous student to a pause, as to the real utility of his pursuit; but the extreme credulousness of his constitution usually urged him to put an end to the dubious reasonings that often rose within him. Now and then, a sharp stroke from the village parson,—levelled, in full canonicals, from the pulpit of a Sunday forenoon,—with the marksman's stern eye fixed, meanwhile, on poor Toby,—made him stagger a little. It was a guilty act,—the clergyman asserted,—to rend away the natural veil which the Creator had drawn over man's discernment of futurity: it was a controversion of the order of His Providence: it was an attempt to seize upon the Almighty's own attributes, and wield a power that belonged solely to Himself. Such eloquent sentences bothered Toby still more, when the well-intentioned shepherd rounded them by exclaiming, as he beat the

"——drum ecclesiastic
With fist instead of a stick,"

that "star-gazers, and wizards, and enchanters, were, each and all, an abomination to the Lord!"

But, alas! for poor Toby,—when his favourite disciple Joe, after being torn from him by Dame Deborah's commandment in obedience to Toby's great foe,—the vicar,—alas! for Toby, when Joe, filled with zeal to discharge his conscience, re-entered the tailor's cottage one evening at dusk, and attacked his old teacher in the very heart and centre of his predilections, declaring there would be no salvation for him in this world, till he had followed the example of the Ephesian Christians, and burnt his cabalistical books; nor any happiness for him in the prospect of a future life, until he had eschewed all his delusive vanities, and cried at the footstool of his Maker for the pardon of his sins! Never was the might with which a mind sinewed by some strong enthusiasm controls even an elder and more experienced intellect more signally evinced than in the contest between the orphan Joe, under his religious frenzy, and his old teacher, the soothsaying tailor. In the outset of this strange opposition and aggression on the part of his late scholar, Toby Lackpenny stoutly parried the blows of his unexpected adversary by returning text for text, and argument for argument.

"Is it not plainly declared in the Book of Judges, that 'the stars in their courses fought against Sisera?'" asked Toby, with all the emphasis which his zeal for the hereditary honour and power of the stars prompted;—"can any thing prove more clearly that they sway human affairs? And the inspired Psalmist saith of the heavenly bodies, that 'Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.' Which word line, according to Aben Ezra, and the most skilful cabalists," continued Toby, diving into the profoundest depths of his learning for the defence of his beloved theories, "ought to be rendered rule or direction, and evidently sets forth the fact that the planets exercise lordship in their respective houses,—while the latter part of the passage makes known the precious truth that the wise and skilful student will learn to understand their language."

"But you have studied their language a long time without understanding it a whit the surer,—you know you have,—for you have told me so more than once, neighbour Toby," replied Joe, with honest and unshrinking fervour; "and as your head is fast becoming grey, and as flowers are often nipped though but in the bud,—I think it would be wiser in you as an aged man, and in me as a frail youth, to get prepared for death;—therefore, I conjure you, Toby, as you value your own soul, to forsake these vanities!"

This simple and sincere language, from one who was then little more than a child in years, shook the old man's heart more than all the clergyman's hortatory thunderbolts had shaken his reason. Toby attempted to renew his sophistries, at Joe's succeeding visits; but felt, at length, thoroughly subdued under the heartfelt and persevering enthusiasm of a mere boy.

"Verily!" Toby Lackpenny often exclaimed in after-times, when relating the progress of his conversion,—"although my will was stubborn, I often trembled before the spirit of that child, like Felix before Paul, or like the gaoler in the prison at Philippi!"

The astrologer burnt his books of the astral science, and all the other occult, and therefore satanical sciences; and he and Joe were thenceforth united in a novel and more elevated pursuit,—the acquirement of a purified and spiritual nature. But the distinctness of minds, and the force of habit in different natures, were strikingly discoverable in the relative degrees of zeal with which the youth and Toby followed their new object. Joe's ascetic fervour has been described. But Toby's bent was of a diverse character: he found it impossible to enter with Joe's vehemence into the quest of an entire renewal of heart,—and could not resist the tendency to seek for enlightenment among the curious treasures of his little library. With indescribable rapture Toby found, as he thought, exactly what he wanted, in the abstruse pages of Jacob Bœhmen. He had long kept the volumes of the mystical German on his shelves; but he assured himself that he never saw the true meaning of the high mysteries developed in the "Forty Questions," with so clear a vision as he did now the films of the "old Adam" were beginning to fall from his eyes.

It need scarcely be observed that Joe heard Toby's announcement of these abstract discoveries with rigid indifference. Neither when the lad's fervour had abated, and disgust and melancholy succeeded, did he feel able to receive the tailor's assurances of the superior consolation to be derived from these puzzling studies. Toby's exhilaration of spirits, happily for himself, suffered little interruption after the full growth of his devoted attachment to the cloudy exercitations of the old quietest.—"Of a truth," he would often say to his customers, "I can never be sufficiently thankful that a merciful Providence showed me the spiritual lantern of Jacob Bœhmen, wherewith I might find, and possess, the pearl of great price!"

Within two years of the expiry of Joe's apprenticeship, however, the devotional and marvel-loving tailor had transferred his worship from the shrine of the mystical German shoemaker to the more lofty, as well as more celestial image of Baron Emanuel Swedenborg. The Scripture histories had, thenceforth, an allegorical sense for Toby, as well as for Joe; and the lad could scarcely hint that he thought the transactions in the garden of Eden were to be read as a figure, before the learned Lackpenny was ready to pour out a profound descant on the proprium, or "sensual principle," which he affirmed to be typified by the serpent in the garden;—and declared his conviction, that the Mosaic account of the first human pair was, in reality, a mere symbolical history of "the First Church," and of the causes of its forfeiture of purity.

At another argumentative season, when the apprentice had ventured to ask if Toby did not think there was something incongruous in the account of Noah's flood, and in the size the ark was said to be,—and how the beasts went in,—and how they were supported,—the penetrating Swedenborgian assured the inquirer, with the utmost gravity, that he thought there was nothing in the whole world of books or facts more easy of explication.

"Know thou, my beloved Joey," said the sincere old man, raising his spectacles, and placing them, like two additional eyes, in the centre of his large forehead, "that whoever giveth his hearty faith to the teaching of the celestial-minded Swedenborg will receive a second eye-sight,—spiritual, and far more precious than the eyes of this earthly body. The Deluge, Joey, represents 'the Second Church,' as the garden of Paradise represents the first. The ark is the man of the church; and the forty days' rain is a figure for the temptations of the senses, by which the Second Church, as well as the First, was tried: you may see that figure plainly cleared up by our Saviour's temptation in the wilderness. The ark is also described as having a window above,—that signifies the intellectual principle; and a door, moreover, at the side,—that denotes the faculty of hearing."