" enjoyments, that no tyrant can withhold; and blessings, which
even the wildest theories of democracy cannot destroy. The asylum where
these sacred heritages of a good conscience are generally concealed, is
the domestic hearth, that circumscribed but important precinct where the
female Lares sit as guardians. Is it presumptuous in one, who has long
officiated at such an household altar, again to solicit the forbearance
and favour, which she has often experienced, by calling public attention
to a popular way of communicating opinions, not first invented by
herself, though she has often had recourse to it. The tale she now
chooses as a vehicle, aims at conveying instruction to the present
times, under the form of a chronicle of the past. The political and
religious motives, which convulsed England in the middle of the
seventeenth century, bear so striking a resemblance to those which are
now attempted to be promulgated, that surely it must be salutary to
remind the inconsiderate, that reformists introduced first anarchy and
then despotism, and that a multitude of new religions gave birth to
infidelity.

Nor let the serious hue which a story must wear that is dated in those
times, when the church militant was called to the house of mourning,
deter the gay and young from a patient perusal. Whatever mere prudential
instructors may affirm, worldly prosperity should not be held out as the
criterion, or the reward of right conduct. Let us remember St.
Augustine's answer to those Pagans, who reproached him with the evils
that Christians, in common with themselves, suffered from the then
convulsed state of the world. They asked him, "Where is thy God?" But he
declined founding the believer's privileges on individual exemptions, or
personal providences. "My God," said he, "in all his attributes,
different from the false impotent Gods of the Heathen, is to be found
wherever his worshippers are;--if I am carried into captivity, his
consolations shall yet reach me;--if I lose the possessions of this
life, my precious faith shall still supply their want;--and if I die,
not as the suffering heathen dies, by his own impious and impatient
hand, but in obedience to the will of God, my great reward begins. I
shall enter upon a life that will never be taken from me; and henceforth
all tears shall be wiped from my eyes."

Adversity purifies communities, as well as individuals. If
fastidiousness, selfishness, pride, and sensuality, conspire