candid with you,
Wilhelmina. Our conversation, I believe, commenced upon the character
of King William; and I will confess to you, that estimating the two
characters in moral worth, I would infinitely prefer being the exiled
and Catholic James than the unnatural and crowned King William."

"You will say next, that you would just as soon be a Catholic as a
Protestant."

"And if I had been brought up in the tenets of the one instead of the
other, what difference would it have made, except that I should have
adhered to the creed of my forefathers, and have worshipped the Almighty
after their fashion, form, and ceremonies? And are not all religions
good if they be sincere?--do not they all tend to the same object, and
have the same goal in view--that of gaining heaven? Would you not
prefer a good, honest, conscientious man, were he a Catholic, to a mean,
intriguing, and unworthy person, who professed himself a Protestant?"

"Most certainly; but I should prefer to the just Catholic a man who was
a just Protestant."

"That is but natural; but recollect, Wilhelmina, you have seen and
heard, as yet, but one side of the question; and if I speak freely to
you, it is only to give you the advantage of my experience from having
mixed with the world. I am true to my party, and, as a man, I must
belong to a party, or I become a nonentity. But were I in a condition
so unshackled that I may take up or lay down my opinions as I pleased,
without loss of character--as a woman may, for instance--so little do I
care for party--so well balanced do I know the right and the wrong to be
on both sides--that I would, to please one I loved, at once yield up my
opinions, to agree with her, if she would not yield up hers to agree
with mine."

"Then you think a woman might do so?--that is no compliment to the sex,
Ramsay; for it is as much as to assert that we have not only no weight
or influence in the world, but also that we have no character or
stability."

"Far from it; I only mean to say that women do not generally enter
sufficiently into politics to care much for them; they generally imbibe
the politics of those they live with, without further examination, and
that it is no disgrace to them if they change them. Besides there is
one feeling in women so powerful as to conquer all others, and when once
that enters the breast, the remainder are absorbed or become obedient to
it."

"And that feeling is--"

"Love, Wilhelmina; and if a