unreasonable, she took the opportunity, when he was quitting that part
of the country for employment at a distance, to remain behind in her old
cottage--the same in which she at that time resided. Such was the
maniac's account of her quarrel with her husband; and, when listening to
men chopping little familiar logic on one of the profoundest mysteries
of Revelation--a mystery which, once received as an article of faith,
serves to unlock many a difficulty, but which is itself wholly
irreducible by the human intellect--I have been sometimes involuntarily
led to think of her ingenious but not very sound argumentation on the
fall of the pig. It is dangerous to attempt explaining, in the
theological province, what in reality cannot be explained. Some weak
abortion of the human reason is always substituted, in the attempt, for
some profound mystery in the moral government of God; and men
ill-grounded in the faith are led to confound the palpable abortion with
the inscrutable mystery, and are injured in consequence.

I succeeded in getting a bed in the mansion-house, without, like Marsyas
of old, perilling my skin; and though there was but little of interest
in the immediate neighbourhood, and not much to be enjoyed within
doors--for I could procure neither books nor congenial
companionship--with the assistance of my pencil and sketch-book I got
over my leisure hours tolerably well. My new friend Isabel would have
given me as much of her conversation as I liked; for there was many a
point on which she had to consult me, and many a mystery to state, and
secret to communicate; but, though always interested in her company, I
was also always pained, and invariably quitted her, after each
lengthened _tete-a-tete_, in a state of low spirits, which I found it
difficult to shake off. There seems to be something peculiarly
unwholesome in the society of a strong-minded maniac; and so I contrived
as much as possible--not a little, at times, to her mortification--to
avoid her. For hours together, however, I have seen her perfectly sane;
and, on these occasions, she used to speak much about her brother, for
whom she entertained a high reverence, and gave me many anecdotes
regarding him, not uninteresting in themselves, which she told
remarkably well. Some of these my memory still retains. "There were two
classes of men," she has said, "for whom he had a special
regard--Christian men of consistent character; and men who, though they
made no