and the authority in the household which it implies, would not
have been without their use--but, in spite of the want of these
advantages, Mr. St. Leger managed to perform the duties, which, in his
opinion, attached to the office, to the satisfaction of every one.

It had not been without considerable difficulty and hesitation that he
had persuaded himself to enter into the plan. He had scruples, as we
have seen; and he had, moreover, an almost invincible dislike to any
thing approaching to family dependence.

The extremity of his circumstances, however, made him, upon a little
consideration, feel that the indulgence of these latter mentioned
feelings of pride and delicacy, was not only unreasonable but almost
positively wrong. And, as for the scruples connected with his
profession, Edgar did not find it difficult to dissipate them.

He set forth, what was in truth the present state of the family at the
Hazels, and enlarged upon the very great need there was for the
introduction of more religious views than now prevailed. According to a
fashion almost universally prevalent when General Melwyn was young,
except with those of professed religious habits, and who were
universally stigmatized as Methodists, family prayer had been utterly
neglected in his family. And, notwithstanding the better discipline
maintained since the evil star of Randall had sunk beneath the horizon,
not the slightest approach to regularity, in this respect, had been as
yet made. Mrs. Melwyn was personally pious, though in a timid and
unconfiding way, her religion doing little to support and strengthen
her mind; but the general, though he did not live, as many of his
generation were doing, in the open profession of skepticism, and that
contempt for the Bible, which people brought up when Tom Paine passed
for a great genius, used to reckon so clever, yet it was but too
probable that he never approached his Creator, in the course of the
twenty-four hours, in any way; nor had he done so, since he was a child
at his mother's knee.

The young captain and his lady were blest with loving, pious, simple
dispositions. They loved one another--they delighted in the dear, happy
world in which they lived, and in the sweet little creature, their own
darling and most precious possession, and they both loved, and most
gratefully served their God, who had given them all these good things,
and loved him with the full warmth of their feeling hearts. They showed
the