"Go on," cried Evelyn, “I like this very well.”

"I have done," said Tremaine. "I only meant to show that, true devotion not being confined to time or place, it is fallacious to reason against the indulgence of pleasure at one moment, because the next is set apart by a rule (and nothing else), to what is called a religious duty."

"That is," replied Evelyn, "you think there ought to be no sabbath; which, if we should be so obliging as to annihilate, there would be no harm in indulging on its eve in an amusement, which, I say, is wholly incompatible with its duties."

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Granting for a moment your consequence, ex absurdo, you have not proved this incompatibility," said Tremaine. "I speak only from experience, the best of guides," answered Evelyn, "for at five-and-twenty I once passed every night of a whole winter at the Opera, and of course never missed on a Saturday; but the effect upon my feelings, and my sacred duties the next day, I have hardly yet ceased to lament as well as to remember."

“You were even then, I believe, in orders ?" observed Tremaine.

"So much the stronger for the argument," replied Evelyn; "for if I, with all the seriousness of my functions before me, could not sometimes, even in the pulpit, divest myself of the dazzling, the dissipated ideas which had filled me but a few hours before, how will those people act, particularly if young, with their passions and imaginations all awake, who have no peculiar sacredness thrown around them from profession, but conceive they are left pretty much to themselves on the point?"

"You either strain this matter too far," answered Tremaine, "or other people have not your vivid imagination. At any rate you recovered yourself."

"I did, but not at the Opera."

"Where then ?"

"In seclusion, in lonely self-examination; for I obeyed the precept, commune with thine own heart in thy chamber.' I went afterwards to the Opera, but not fre

quently; never on a Saturday night; and was all the better for my change of habits."

The gravity of Evelyn's recollections here made him stop, and the conversation paused; nor did Tremaine think proper to continue the discussion of that part of the subject.

END OF VOL. I

BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.