Seeing Tremaine moved, Evelyn went on: "So clear is this, that I would recommend you to the well-known tale of Parnell, as a sufficient solution, on this part of your objection, of all your doubts. It is a fiction, indeed, but easily reducible to fact. You see there, why an apparently generous man may be robbed, and a miser enriched; why a favourite and innocent child may be cut off from a naturally virtuous father, and a man, in the very act of an hospitable office, murdered by an ungrateful villain; yet all be right when understood. All this is so cogent, as well as so ingenious, so convincing, as well as so beautifully told, that I could envy the author of this now common-place, but still very delightful piece."

Tremaine felt much convinced; but said he would be better satisfied with a critique upon real

cases.

"All imaginary illustrations," said Evelyn," if they are sound, may be made real. Once but ponder the sentiment, that evil is almost always the concomitant of greater good, and objections, founded on the injustice of God, will melt away. You have talked of plagues and earthquakes. They are frightful things; but could the processes which make the world what it is, for the habitation of man, pro ceed without them? And if they cannot, can their own nécessary consequences be avoided? In some

instances, man is himself the cause of his own liability to their mischiefs, by fixing himself so completely in the midst of them. The world is surely large enough. The same may be said of venomous creatures and the beasts of the desert. They have a right to their world, as well as we.

I

"But would have me criticise real cases. you have told you I dare not; simply because I do not, cannot know their reality. All that I do know is, how mistaken we ourselves are in our maxims of judging. Cicero makes Providence questioned, because the good and bold Scipios were beaten in Spain, and Hannibal had killed Marcellus; nay, even because F. Maximus buried his son, after he had been consul. As if, because the Scipios had been conquerors, they had necessarily been good, and might not in their turn be conquered; as if a consul might not die in the lifetime of his father; or, as Wollaston well asks, as if Hannibal was not as good a man as Marcellus."

"You have not yet noticed the case of Kirk," said Tremaine.

"My friend," replied Evelyn, "I have felt that case, and a thousand others nearer our own times, as pinchingly as perhaps you would have me. But am I prepared for the facts even there? That Kirk deserves execration-that the hanging he inflicted on another would have been too good for himself—

I feel as well as you; that he has long incurred the Divine vengeance I believe; and even here on earth, for the reasons I gave, I know not that he escaped. But as to the objects of his cruelty, were they even themselves faultless? One was, at least, a rebel, and his life not unjustly, perhaps, forfeited; for there was not a pretence for Monmouth's invasion.. The other, so tender, possibly so pardonable, certainly so abused-was she, in the conduct which provokes our pity, altogether innocent? It is this pity for her, and anger at Kirk, that tell us not to scrutinize too severely, how little she was qualified to imitate the imploring, the tender, but high-minded Isabel !"*

4

66 You keep me at arm's length, I allow," said Tremaine, even on this shocking case. I will now, however, come nearer home, (alas! how near!) and will mention one, where malevolence itself has never imagined blame," 74

"I wait for it," said Evelyn.

"The death of Percival!” returned Tremaine. "Of all the cases in which man seems to have been abandoned by Heaven, and which leave the upholder of Providence without hope, I have always thought this the clearest. I am not even yet reco vered from the shock which it gave me, in common

* Of course he refers to Shakspeare's Isabel, asia

with the whole nation.

I saw him struck: I saw

him die: and though I had opposed his measures, I gave him, with many others, antagonists as well as friends, tears, from which I sometimes can scarcely now refrain."

Evelyn was agitated; for he had known and greatly loved this admirable person. >>

He was a man," continued Tremaine, "so pure, so honest, so clear in his great office, so perfect in private life, that to name him, seemed to be to name virtue. But that such a man, the delight of his friends, the adoration of his family, the admiration of his opponents; that one so mild, yet so brave; so single-hearted, yet so keen, should be cut off by murder in the very bosom of the senate, and of his country, where a thousand arms would have raised themselves to defend him, that such a thing should be, leads for ever to despair of that protection from Heaven, which, you tell me, not only can be, but is afforded to mankind. For, of him, how justly may

we say,

Cadit et Ripheus justissimus unus

Qui fuit in Teucris, et servantissimus æqui.". Here Tremaine was absolutely stopped by his feelings.

My admiration of Mr. Percival," replied Evelyn, with almost equal emotion, "was so great, my grati‣ tude for his friendship so sincere, his talents were

so commanding, his genius so penetrating, yet his simplicity so primitive, that I can only join you in this warm and merited eulogy. I may truly say, I love you the more for loving him; and you could not have mentioned an event more calculated to stagger me, than the catastrophe of this excellent person. Still I lose not my confidence; and though I am terrified and astounded at the contemplation of this cruel murder, permitted, as you say, in the very lap of his country, upon one of its brightest and best citizens; though I humble myself in fear and trembling before the mysterious Being that could have warded the blow, and did not; still I am convinced all was done in wisdom-wisdom, though impenetrable. Possibly, to the victim himself, it might have been mercy. That it was wrath to him so amiable, and though unwarned so prepared, I cannot believe. The manner of his death, to us so horrid, was, probably, to himself not worse, possibly not so bad as some natural disease of which he might have died; certainly not nearly so bad as many of which men actually do die. It was instant and without pain; and, as I observed, if ever man was prepared on so sudden a warning, it was he.

"The rest must ever be impervious even to conjecture. The proved goodness of God, and his concern for the happiness of his creatures at large, show that this illustrious sacrifice could not be an