On returning to the hotel Seers found a letter for him.
He became pale as he saw it, for it was sealed with black.
While reading it he trembled violently, sank into a chair,
and burst into tears.

Harry had learned to love this young man for his purity
and gentleness, his warm heart and intelligent mind, which,
though he was totally unacquainted with the world, was
richly stored with the knowledge to be derived from books.

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Harry approached him with feeling, while Seers wept in
silence.

“What is it, my dear friend?”

“My wife!” murmured he. “We were all in all to each
other. She gave up a little income of her own in order to
enable me to come abroad. She refused to accompany me
from motives of economy. I left her in perfect health, and
now she's dead—dead—dead!” and he repeated the word,
as if he had forgotten all other things in that tremendous
idea. An interesting scene followed, in which Harry manifested
the deepest sympathy and attempted to offer consolation.
At length the poor fellow took his hand and said,

“I thank you for your sympathy, Mr. Lennox; but, for
the present, leave me.”

For a moment Harry hesitated, almost apprehensive lest
the sudden and violent shock might lead to some act of
desperation; but, on looking at the face of his unfortunate
friend, his streaming and upraised eyes, and the tranquil
resignation which even acute anguish did not deprive him
of, he felt ashamed of his suspicion, and still more ashamed
of the manner in which he himself had met the first (and,
compared with the present affliction of Seers, how insignificant!)
shock he had received from the displeasure of Miss
Elton, when he for a moment proposed to terminate his existence.
He went out, therefore, and, his heart swelling
with compassion, left him alone.

The whole of that day and the next Seers kept his
chamber, refusing to receive even his friend. In the afternoon
of the third day, however, he sent for Harry, and met
him with a calm and even cheerful smile. A Bible lay
open before him.

“Well, my dear Mr. Lennox, it is over,” said he; and,
though his eyes were continually wet, he did not weep.
“You would not believe me if I were to describe to you
how calm, cheerful, and happy I am; how this loss has
purified and elevated me; how much more spiritual and intellectual
it has made me. I now possess two inexhaustible
sources of delight, which, although they existed before,
were not visible to me in their true value. One is the recollection
of her, the spotless purity of her mind, the inexhaustible
tenderness of her nature, and the angelic sweetness
of her temper. From this, when it renders me too
sad, I turn to the second. I paint the wished-for, happy

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moment when death shall relieve me from the cares and
griefs of life, and I shall meet her once more, a radiant angel,
never to be separated again.”

Harry saw it relieved him to speak, and he, therefore,
suffered him to go on without interruption. As he now
raised his face, beaming with hope and pleasure, he addressed
him with feeling and sincerity on the subject of his
loss.

“But, after all,” continued he, “notwithstanding your
grief, how happy you are! I have never lost a friend. I
don't know what death is; I cannot fancy what effect it
would have on me. Should I ever suffer such a calamity,
I shall think of you; I shall do more—I shall envy you.”

“Here,” said Seers, laying his hand on the Bible, “I
find consolation for all grief, solution to all mystery, advice
for every situation. You are an unbeliever; but you will
come to it one of these days.”

Harry shook his head.

“Indeed, I wish I could.”

“Ah, my young friend, I once, like you, doubted, derided
it all. Youth sees only the objections, of which there are
some, apparently, unanswerable, I freely allow; but the
united arguments in its favour are infinitely more so. A
subject so vast—a scheme which commenced with the
globe, runs through all human history, and, embracing the
creation, the universe, and man, passes over death, and comprehends
the ultimate destiny of the soul beyond the grave,
and the final termination of sublunary things. So vast a
subject may be supposed to contain some discrepancies, or,
at least, what may appear so to us.”

Harry listened with respectful attention and interest.

“What do you mean,” inquired he, “for I am very ignorant
on this subject, by the scheme of Christianity extending
from the beginning of the world? Christianity is
only eighteen hundred years old, is it not?”

“Have you ever examined the prophecies?”

“I have looked them over.”

“Well! you are but a young pupil! but I'll tell you
what,” he added, cheerfully, “you shall go through a course
of religious reading with me; it will not, believe me, be
either a dull or a sad task. We will look into the evidences
of Christianity together. It will relieve me” (and his eyes
were full of tears while he spoke) “from a weak indulgence

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of grief, and I venture to hope you will either make me an
infidel, or I shall convert you into a Christian.”

“Yes, but,” said Harry, “I have already examined; I
have read the Bible continuously through; I have read
Newton, Butler, and all that sort of thing.”

“All that sort of thing!” echoed Seers. “But an examination,
by a mind in such a state as yours, unaided by one
more experienced, is sometimes likely to do more harm
than good. Let us do it together. Let us leave London together:
accompany me on to Italy, for I have now less cause
to return to America than I had before. We will read and
study the whole subject together; I will point out the way.
It is the most important thing for you, for of what avail is it
if a man gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Oh,
you will find more happiness in this than in any other thing.
One day in his courts is better than a thousand. You had
better be a doorkeeper in the house of your God than to dwell
in the tents of wickedness. You will then be able to say,
when misfortune overtakes you, as it has now overtaken
me—and it will overtake you—you cannot expect to walk
through this vale of tears unscathed—you will be able to
say, as I do, `Yea, the sparrow hath found her a house, and
the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her
young, even thine altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my
God.”'

From whatever secret association, there was nothing
which repelled Harry more than phrases quoted in conversation
from the Scriptures. Strong in yet undisappointed
hope and buoyant happiness, he felt a disagreeable impression
from the sight of his friend's sorrow, nor was he pleased
with the prediction of evil to himself. He therefore only
replied:

“My good friend, you know I have come abroad to see
Europe—not to study what I might better have studied at
home. Besides, I am engaged to-day to dine with the Earl
of Rivington, to go into the country with him, to pay a visit
to the Duke of G—, to do a thousand things. You, also,
are engaged to the earl, you know.”

“He will require no better apology for my absence from
his table and from London, than the sad event which has
struck me, and which you will please to tell him. I shall
start for the Continent to-morrow. I was wrong to press you
too far, perhaps. Your time will doubtless come. In the

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mean while, we must bid good-by now. You are now going
to dine with the earl, and will be late out. I shall go early
in the morning, and we shall not see each other again.”

“Good-by, my friend. We shall meet, doubtless, once
more, when, I trust, time will have softened your anguish.”

“Time!” said he: “I trust myself to Him who made
time.”

And so they parted, poor Seers to his sad thoughts and
spiritual consolations; Harry to a scene of brilliant gayety
and novel delight, which might well have dazzled an older
person, and over his anticipations of which the light shadow
caused by the grief and the prediction of Seers passed
immediately away.

Time and space will not allow our relating at full the
experience of our hero as a man of pleasure and fashion:
how he found himself at dinner after he left Seers, in the
midst of the most distinguished society that one of his own
fancies would have conjured up; how every individual he
sat by, when he heard him named, almost made him start;
how Moore sat opposite him, and Lord Brougham near,
and Sir Robert Peel on one side, and Mr. Bulwer on the
other; and how the delightful young lady he had known as
Miss Rivington smiled and whispered to him something
about Pontius Pilate and Nebuchadnezzar, and how the earl
was exactly like a father to him, and how much at ease and
perfectly delighted he found himself in five minutes, and
what a charming person Lady Rivington was, and what
plans were made for his future sight-seeing, and how he
had another invitation to pass a week or two at the enchanting
seat of Lord H——, and how he went home from this
dinner, and stopped in at the king's theatre to hear the most
magnificent music in the world, and had the inexpressible
pleasure of seeing Taglioni floating about the stage like a
sylph, and how he did go out to the seat of his distinguished
friend, though not before he had seen London pretty well
and made some agreeable acquaintance, and how many letters
he wrote to his father and Frank, describing all these
fine things in the style of the Arabian Tales, and how anxious
he was to have letters from home, and how he never
had been, since his first birthday, one ten thousandth time
so enchanted with life and this bright world. A poor time
for the sad and spiritual Seers to ask him to leave London
and all these fine things, and bury himself in studies of so
grave a nature as religion.

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