kept me more in her own apartment, with an agreeable freedom; and enquired oftner what part of the house I was in.

AFTER my cousin left me I continued for some time in those sentiments of piety I have mentioned. And God granted me the grace to forgive injuries with such readiness, that my confessor was surprised; as he knew that some young ladies had, out of envy, traduced me; and that I spoke well of them as occasion offered. I was seized with a tertian ague, which lasted four months, in which I suffered much; yet during the time, was enabled to suffer with much resignation and patience, In this frame of mind and manner of life I persevered, so long as I continued the practice of mental prayer.

NEAR a twelvemonth after, we went to pass some days in the country. My father took along with us one of his relations, a very accomplished young gentleman. He had a great desire to marry. me; but my father, who had resolved not to give me to any near kinsman, on account of the difficulty of obtaining dispensations, put him off, without alledging any false or frivolous reasons for it. As this young gentleman was very devout, and every day said the office of the Virgin, I said it with him; and to have time for it, left off prayer, which was to me the first inlet of evils. Yet I kept up for a long time, some share of the spirit of piety; for I went to seek out the little shepherdesses, to instruct them in their religious duties; yet this spirit gradually decayed, not being nourished by prayer. Hereby I became cold toward GOD: All my old faults revived; to which I added an excessive vanity. The love I began to have for myself, extinguished what remained in me of the love of Gop.

I DID,

I DID not wholly leave off mental prayer, with out asking my confessor's leave; I told him I thought it better to say the office of the virgin every day, than to practise prayer; as I had not time for both. I saw not that this was a stratagem of the enemy to draw me from GOD, and to entangle me insensibly in the snares he had laid for me; in truth I had time sufficient for both, as I had no other occupations than what I prescribed to myself. My confessor was easy in the matter; not being a man of prayer, he gave his consent, to my great hurt.

Он my GOD, if the value of prayer were but known, the great advantage which accrues to the soul from conversing with thee, and what consequence it is of to salvation, every one would be assiduous in it. It is a strong hold into which the enemy cannot enter. He may attack it, besiege it, make a noise about its walls; but while we are faithful, and hold our station he cannot hurt us. It is alike requisite to dictate to children the necessity of prayer as of their salvation; but alas! unhappily, it is thought sufficient to tell them that there is a heaven and a hell; that they must endeavour. to avoid the latter and attain the former; and yet they are not taught the shortest and easiest way of arriving at it. The only way to heaven is prayer; a prayer of the heart, which every one is capable of, and not of reasonings which are the fruits of study, or exercise of the imagination, which, in filling the mind with wandering objects, rarely settle it; and instead of warming the heart with love. to God, leave it cold and languishing, Let the poor come, let the ignorant and carnal come, let the children without reason and knowledge, let the dull or hard hearts which can retain nothing come to

the

the practice of prayer, and they shall become wise. Oh ye great, wise and rich, Have ye not a heart capable of loving what is proper for you, and of hating what is destructive? Love the sovereign good, hate all evil, and ye will be truly wise. When ye love any one, is it because ye know the reasons of love and its definitions? No, certainly; Ye love because your heart is formed to love what it finds amiable. And surely ye cannot but know that there is nought lovely in the universe but GoD: Know ye not that he has created you, that he has died for you: But if these reasons are not sufficient which of you has not some necessity, some trouble, or some misfortune? Which of you does not know how to tell his malady, and beg relief? Come then to this Fountain of all Good, without complaining to weak and impotent creatures, who cannot help you; come to prayer; lay before GoD your troubles, beg his grace, and above all that you may love him. None can exempt himself from loving; for none can live without a heart, nor the heart without love.

WHY should any amuse themselves, in seeking reasons for loving Love itself: Let us love without reasoning about it; and we shall find ourselves filled with love, before the others have learned the reasons which induce to it. Make trial of this love, and you will be wiser in it than the most skilful philosophers. In love, as in every thing else, experience instructs better than reasoning. Oh come then drink at this fountain of living waters, instead of the broken cisterns of the Creature, which far from allaying your thirst, only tends continually to augment it. Did ye once drink at this fountain, ye would not seek elsewhere for any thing to quench your thirst; for while ye still continue to draw from this source, ye would thirst no longer

after

after the world: But if ye quit it, alas! the enemy has the ascendant; he will give you of his poisoned draughts, which may have an apparent sweetness, but will assuredly rob you of life.

THUS, I forsook the fountain of living water when I left off prayer. I became as a vineyard exposed to pillage, whose hedges torn down give liberty to all the passengers to ravage it. I began to seek in the creature what I had found in GOD. He left me to myself, because I first left him; and it was his will by permitting me to sink into the hor rible pit, to make me feel the necessity I was in, of approaching him in prayer. Thou hast said, that thou wilt destroy those adulterous souls who depart from thee. Alas! it is their departure alone which causes their destruction, since, in departing from thee, Oh Sun of Righteousness, they enter into the regions of darkness and the coldness of death, from whence they would never rise, if thou didst not revisit them; if thou didst not by thy divine light, illuminate their darkness, and by thy enlivening warmth, melt their icy hearts, and restore them to life.

I FELL then into the greatest of all misfortunes ; for I wandered yet further and further from thee, Oh my God, and thou didst gradually retire from a heart which had quitted thee. Yet such is thy goodness, that it seemed as if thou hadst left me with regret; and when this heart was desirous to return again unto thee, with what speed didst thou come to meet it. This proof of thy love and mercy, shall be to me an everlasting testimony of thy goodness and of my own ingratitude.

I BECAME still more passionate than I had ever been, as age gave more force to nature. I was fre

quently

quently guilty of lying; I felt my heart corrupt and vain; the spark of divine grace was almost extinguished in me, and I fell into a state of indifference and indevotion; tho' I still carefully kept up outside appearances; and the habit I had acquired of behaving at church, made me appear better than I was. Vanity, which had been excluded my heart, now resumed its seat. I began to pass a great part of my time before a looking-glass. I found so much pleasure in viewing myself therein, that I thought others were in the right who practised the same. Instead of making use of this exterior, which God had given me, that I might love him the more, it became to me only the means of a vain complacency. All seemed to me to look beautiful in my person, but I saw not that it covered a polluted soul.-This rendered me so inwardly vain, that I doubt whether any ever exceeded me therein, but there was an affected modesty in my outward deportment that would have deceived the world.

THE high esteem I had for myself made me find faults in every one else of my own sex. I had no eyes but to see my own good qualities, and to discover the defects of others. I hid my own faults. from myself, or if I remarked any, yet to me they appeared little in comparison of others. I excused, and even figured them to myself as perfections. Every idea I had of others and of myself was false. Iloved reading to such excess, particularly romances, that I spent whole days and nights at them; sometimes the day broke whilst I continued to read, insomuch, that for a length of time I almost lost the habit of sleeping; I was ever eager to get to the end of the book, in hopes of finding something to satisfy a certain craving which I found within me, but my thirst for reading was only encreased the more Iread. F

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