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The excitement of getting out to sea for the first time, to
a young fellow like Harry, is very great. It is one of those
immense changes which make life look most like a passing
drama. In one hour he is in the midst of a gay, crowded,
roaring city, surrounded by the scenes of his youth and boyhood,
and beholding only the horizon, which has, till now,
bounded his existence within a narrow circle; the next
he is abroad on the eternal ocean. All the objects of his
love, all the shapes familiar to him, have passed away, and
who can say whether he will ever see them again?

As the last point of land, a dim shape of blue, melted into
the air under Harry's thoughtful gaze, he was assailed by
various serious and some tender reflections. How long
should he be absent? What changes might take place before
his return? Might he not leave his bones in a foreign
land, perhaps in the ocean? Might not death strike some
of those beloved objects, and might he not come back, after
years' wandering, to find seats empty in the home circle?
If fate had decreed it so, which one was it he was destined
never to see again? The last look, the pale face, the anguish,
and trembling agitation of Fanny Elton at the moment
of parting, he felt could never, never fade from his
memory; and he felt, also, that, but for the certainty he had
acquired from her own rejection of him, and from Emmerson's
statement, he was a monster to part from her so
coldly. All the hopes once cherished respecting her, her
beautiful and noble form and face, her easy and graceful
manners, the numerous tokens of love he had received from
her at various times, all came thronging together upon his
memory, and affected him again with the inexpressible,
sweet, and yet painful idea that her alienation was the result
of an error. It is no imputation on his manhood to say
that, as he stood on the stern of the now fast-advancing
ship, and saw the last point of blue cloud which marked
the spot of all his love, and where so many hearts beat
with love for him, an irrepressible tendency to moisture
obliged him to keep his eyes for some time longer than he

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should otherwise have done, away from the observation of
his fellow-passengers.

These tender emotions were, however, soon lost in those
with which father Neptune delights to agitate inexperienced
intruders into his watery domain. It was not till after the
expiration of several days that his health and appetite returned;
when they did, he felt that, if the horrors of suffering
had been great, they were more than compensated by
the pleasures of convalescence. His spirits were never
lighter or his thoughts clearer. To the natural elasticity
of youth were added the anticipations and excitement consequent
upon his voyage. For some time these occupied
his mind almost exclusively, in a manner of which a European
can form but a faint idea.

The abrupt and total transition from the New World to the
Old, to one quitting the former for the first time, is, perhaps,
the nearest approach to enchantment ever granted to a mortal.
Let the European be indulgent when he remarks the
amazement, bewilderment, and enthusiasm of the newly-arrived
American. The poor fellow is in a dream, looking
on what have always been to him mere ideal forms, now
suddenly conjured up around him in shapes of still only
half-credited reality. London and Paris have hitherto
been mere sublime visions of his imagination side by side
with ancient Rome, Babylon, Thebes, or Jerusalem. The
town of Louis Philippe or Queen Victoria is as astounding
a spectre to him as that of Pilate or Pharaoh, and when he
first gazes on Peel, or Moore, or Wordsworth, or Wellington,
the delightful novelty would scarcely seem greater were
he to discover among these celebrated personages Shakspeare,
Cæsar, Pericles, or old Homer.

For some time these reflections formed the subject of our
young traveller's reveries, but by-and-by his mind reverted
to his home, to the bright scenes of his native city, to his
happy family circle, the well-known rooms, the loved voices,
the familiar forms already beginning to be hallowed by time
and distance. Among them his fancy distinguished Miss
Elton with new and strange emotions. Despite all the
proofs he had of her frivolous and capricious character,
there were certain words and looks which remained printed
on his memory. Her image no more came to him as a
coquette, but arrayed in all the charms of tender fidelity and
patient sadness. He was beginning to count over, with the

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solitary delight of a miser, each look and word of hers,
when, recollecting he had proof positive from Emmerson
that she was but a trifler, he refused to follow the subject
farther, and resolved (not for the first time!) to think of her
no more.

At last he recollected the promise he had given his
mother to read the other volumes with which her affectionate
piety had supplied him.

“What time so proper as the present?” thought he, with
a yawn and a smile. “To be sure, I had rather study something
a little more profitable and interesting, and more immediately
in connexion with the countries I'm going to see;
but, once ashore, I shall have no more time or inclination
to wade through the Bible. Here, at least, we have plenty
of time.”

So he went down, and, taking out the volume in which
were inscribed the words, “To Henry Lennox, from his affectionate
mother—`Be not wise in your own conceit,' ”
he commenced it with a sturdy determination to devote a
large portion of every day until he should complete it. He
accordingly set himself seriously to the performance of this
resolution. He felt a certain consciousness of embarrassment
and shame when any of his fellow-passengers walking
near him discovered what he was reading.

“They'll take me for a Methodist parson, I suppose,”
said he to himself; “but no matter! I don't mind their
opinions, and I quite agree with my mother, that, as a mere
matter of curiosity—as an accomplishment even—the book
ought to be read by every gentleman.”

For some days he read steadily on. The weather happened
to be calm and pleasant, and he pursued his task
with unremitting assiduity. He was habitually a rapid
reader, and, once fairly engaged, he made great progress. In
a week he had finished the Old Testament, and got far into
the second evangelist.

“You pursue your studies with great diligence,” said a
voice to him, one afternoon, as he was absorbed in his labour.

The person who addressed him was a gentleman of about
fifty, of a pleasing and dignified exterior, whom Harry had
previously remarked accompanied by a young lady of a more
than prepossessing appearance.

“Oh, I am—I was going to say, performing a wager. I

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mean, I am fulfilling an injunction in giving the Bible the
benefit of a continuous perusal.”

“You do not read from the attractions you yourself find
there?”

“I did not at first, but I find some parts of it more interesting
than I could have supposed.”

“Really,” rejoined the stranger, with a smile, “you must
think that very odd.”

“Oh, no, I don't,” replied Harry. “In the first place, any
resolute employment is a protection against ennui, which,
with sea-sickness, is the fashionable malady on board a ship,
you know.”

“May I ask, without boldness, who has enjoined this
task upon you?”

“My mother.”

“She is a believer then?”

“Oh, yes; she believes it all.”

“And you do not?”

Harry paused and looked his interrogator in the face, uncertain
whether to be pleased or offended at his freedom.
There was something, however, in his countenance and
manner so benevolent and intelligent that he replied with
frankness.

“I don't think any man of sense can believe it literally; it
is rather too heavy a task upon credulity.”

“Has it interested you as a literary production?”

“Yes; some scenes are dramatic and some descriptions
poetic. It is a curious—a very curious book. Did you ever
take the trouble to read it through continuously?”

“Yes, I have read it quite through; but I fear I interrupt
you.”

Harry returned his polite salutation, and resumed his
reading. In two weeks he finished it, and closed the volume
with a sigh of fatigue.

“Well, it's done at last,” thought he; “I really had no
idea I could get through with it in so short a time; I had
always a fancy, somehow or other, that reading the Bible
was a work of years, and, consequently, postponed it to
some indefinite period of sickness, confinement, or old age.
Now it's done, and, thank Heaven, it's off my mind. I hope
my poor, dear mother will be satisfied.”

Thus was one of the works disposed of, but without one
beam of light which his “poor mother” hoped such a

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perusal would send into his mind. He had read a curious historical
monument of ancient credulity, palmed upon mankind
when there was no press, and descended to the present
time in some odd way, which he remembered Gibbon had
admirably explained, though he did not recall exactly how.
So far from having become any more inclined to believe,
he was ten times more confirmed in his incredulity. He
had forgotten much of the Bible. Some of it he never had
read, and was entirely unacquainted with, and, truth to say,
he could conceive nothing less probable, less believable,
than the principal parts of both the Old and New Testaments.
The supernatural events were so glaringly fabulous, and the
historical ones so infinitely removed from inspiration—so
darkened with blood, crime, ignorance, and superstition,
that the only reflection it raised in his mind was wonder
how it could all be received, in the present enlightened age,
as the faith of civilized Europe and America; how churches
and chapels could be forever rising to it, and how it came
that those sensible, brave fellows who had honestly written
against it should rest under an odium.

In this mood of mind he took up Newton on the Prophecies,
and fell fairly asleep a dozen times before he reached
the welcome “finis.” Here was another mystery—a real
unsolvable problem. Did Newton believe in what he has
displayed so much learning at attempting to prove? If yes,
by what extraordinary hallucination of intellect—by what
unimaginable train of reasoning had he formed his opinion?
If no, why had he lent himself with such apparent earnestness
to a fraud—a pious one, perhaps, but still a palpable
fraud? There was something despicable, he found, in such
an enterprise. He must have been, then, either a block-head
or a charlatan.

From Newton on the Prophecies he went to Butler's
Analogy. But he was now tired of following an ungrateful
subject, and could not accompany this author through his
deep reasonings. They demanded an attention too unremitting
and severe. Besides, he was already convinced that
Butler was attempting to establish the truth of an impossibility.
He might certainly do this with more or less acuteness
and logic. A skilful lawyer may throw a wonderful
plausibility around a bad cause, particularly if he believe it
to be a just one, and an enthusiastic mind may be led by
sophistry to believe anything. He therefore read on with

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his eyes, but not with his reason. His mind, too, began to
be crowded again with briliant images of Europe, or with
soft recollections of home, or of Miss Elton. He would
read—that he had promised to do—page after page, but he
aroused himself at the end of each chapter to a weary conviction,
that, instead of accompanying the author through
his abstruse, complicated arguments, he had been, in imagination,
leading Miss Elton down the road from Rose Hill to
the landing-place, or bidding her good-by with affected indifference,
while his heart thrilled with the expression of
her face and those flattering words, “Harry, good-by! God
bless you!”

In short, he laid by the volumes of which thus, according
to his promise, he had read every word, with a renewed
conviction that Christianity was a mere Eastern fable. He
had not even seen any beauty in it; he had not felt any
moral power. The mysterious person to whom all tends,
and from whom all flows, was no more, in his eyes, than a
historical character, extraordinary only from the notice subsequently
taken of him. If before he had disbelieved from
instinct, he now conceived himself entitled to reject upon
more rational grounds. He had examined, and remained
unconvinced. He acknowledged himself a Deist, and, true
to his impatient and decisive character, from Deism he
stepped to Atheism. If there were no God, of course there
was no hereafter. Thus, in the mind of youthful philosophers,
are disposed of these grave questions.