quence of his unrepented crimes. He had not numbed the early
feelings of religion by the cold torpor of Atheism; nor could he
persuade himself to indulge in those reveries of election and
impeccability, which had now saturated his Lady's mind. He felt himself
to be an accountable being, not a collection of animated atoms
associated by chance, which, when the vital spark was extinguished,
would crumble into dust without record or responsibility. He knew he was
a sinner by choice, who had abused his free-will; not a passive vessel
of wrath, pre-destined to destruction. No inflating ebullition of
enthusiasm told him he was become one of those favourites of Heaven who
cannot forfeit salvation. He therefore clung to this wretched life, as
to the edge of a precipice that beetled over the gulph of perdition.
Despair was with him the substitute of repentance. He looked back on his
offences to his King and his friend, convinced that they had exceeded
the bounds of mercy. Often did he deplore the utter impossibility of his
regaining that state of contented innocence, when he and Allan Neville
shared each other's hearts, before the superior qualities and nobler
expectations of his friend excited his envy and ambition. He adverted to
that time when his love for the beautiful Lady Eleanor was pure and
generous, before she had wrought upon him to become the instrument and
participator of her criminal ambition and insatiable rapacity. He had
not the audacity to think a life stained by perfidy and injustice, made
him fitter for the reception of extraordinary grace. The external
propriety of his manners, and the patronage he liberally afforded to the
divines of the Rump-party, had gained him the reputation of a man of
extraordinary piety; but the austerities he practised, and the devotions
in which he joined, afforded no balsam to his woes. He had been early
taught that restitution to the wronged was one of the evidences of real
penitence. His title and fortune were the right-hand; he could not cut
off the pride of life to which he was wedded. Had he never known
greatness, he would now have been happy as Walter de Vallance, living in
a state of respectable competence. He fell into the common fault of
incorrigible offenders; lamenting that he had not subdued the first
cravings of desire, and wishing to recall the irremediable past, while
to reform the present was too vast a labour.

Sometimes he had persuaded himself, that if he knew Alla