A

WORLD WITHOUT SOULS.

66

CHAP. I.

WHENCE it is plain that these men have no

souls.""Incredible!" said Gustavus, as he read the sentence-" the Spaniard must be mistaken." -"By no means incredible," said M. who read the sentence with him.

The two remarks were made beneath the shade of an oak which frowned over one of the wildest rocks of St. Foy. Gustavus was seventeen; his friend was sixty. They were the inhabitants of a cottage, for whose foundation its builders might be said to have wrenched a spot of ground from nature. A little level had been planed in the stubborn surface, and their two rooms restupon the mountain like the nest of some bird upon the bosom of the woods.

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M. had brought his young companion to Switzerland when an infant, and they had not quitted it even for a day. Gustavus had lost his parents

before he could learn their inestimable value. There was therefore an easy translation of his affection to the person of M. whom he loved, as the heart is likely to love, which has but few objects. For M. also, habit had in a great measure done the work of nature: and this son of his adoption occupied that place in his bosom which his own had left empty by an early flight to Heaven. A simple, but a solemn compact, seemed to have taken place between them" I will be to thee a parent-I will be to thee a child."

I ought to describe the persons whom I have thus introduced upon the scene, and shall begin with M.-Le Brun would have said, from his wrinkled countenance, "he is a man familiar with sorrows." If, however, he had ever tossed in a sea of troubles, it was evident that the storm was gone by. Piety and peace had met together in his bosom ; and like the fabulous twins of other days, this union had spread a calm upon the waters. His manner, perhaps, had suffered more than his character; it was absent and sometimes abrupt. His conversation was rather surrendered than bestowed; but it was a generous and entire surrender when the demand was made. If his sayings had a flavour of salt in them, they had

no bitterness. Like most men, he had peculiarities; some of which were by no means defensible. He valued knowledge, for instance, but he sought it in unusual channels. He loved virtue, but he sometimes pursued it by questionable courses. In the opinion of the world his sentiments also upon religion would, I fear, be esteemed peculiar ;-his charities might by some be called extravagance, and his piety enthusiasm-but then the judgment of the world is not always to be trusted upon these points. In the village of St. Foy the simple people loved him as a father.-And they saw him too often and too clearly to be much mistaken in him.

There is another portrait yet to be sketched, but it is easily done. At the age of Gustavus characters have much the same features. Not Indeed that the mind is the mere sheet of white paper to which some philosophers have compared it. For, if as susceptible, it is by no means as pure. But as, in our way to manhood, the body universally becomes a prey to a certain series of known evils; so the same diseases early discover themselves in the human heart, and display themselves in nearly the same form, till modified by circumstances.-M. knew the heart of man, for he

tricity of M. the declaration which followed. M. as we have said, loved experiments, and he had determined to show his pupil the world, through a singular medium. "If," said he, "I can bring him to a conclusion that those who live as the world live can have no souls-his next conclusion will be-that he, who has a soul, must shun the follies and vices into which they run.”—Thus was the point made out. M. sighed to think, that, to make Gustavus what he ought to be, he must endeavor to render him unlike many of his fellowcreatures. This regret, however, was not strong enough to check his design; and, as he was no longer an old man when he had a new and favorite project to execute, he rushed upon it at once. "It is by no means incredible then," said he to Gustavus, "that this people should have no souls, Other writers have held the same opinion of still larger portions of the world. Mahomet, for instance, knew the world, perhaps as well as any uninspired person, and he declares that women have no souls. Monboddo, a great philosopher. even iu a country of philosophers, and who also says he knew the world, contends that men are only monkies who have rubbed away their tails. A grave Spanish writer has made this theory