CHAPTER X.

THE next day, immediately after breakfast, which was passed in perfect silence, the looks of the admiral and Mrs. Penn expressing most eloquently their respective characters-his the angry sternness of parental authority disputed, and hers all the solicitudes of conjugal respect and maternal tenderness combined. Soon as breakfast was over, the admiral, taking his lady and William into his study, with a constrained kindness thus addressed the latter:- "William, you are my child, my only child, the child of all my affections and of all my hopes. I feel, therefore, that I must be most unhappy if I part from you, and especially by your own undutifulness. I hope you have thought seriously of these things. Now will you go back to the Univer- sity, and, by proper concessions, recover your honourable standing, and also renouncing Tom Loe and his silly quakers, return to the bosom of the ESTABLISHED CHURCH ?"

With all the meekness yet firmness of an honest quaker, William replied, that he had "turned his thoughts to the light within; and that while he felt, with exceeding affection, how much he owed to his earthly father, he owed still more to his heavenly, and therefore could never offend him, by sinning against the light, and endangering his own soul."

"Well, then, you will not go back to the ESTABLISHED CHURCH!" replied the admiral, angrily.

"While my present convictions remain, father, I can never leave the quakers."

"Well then, sir," rejoined the admiral, quite dark with rage, "you must leave me :" and ordered him instantly to quit the house.

Deeming it fruitless to reply or remonstrate, William took up his hat and went out of the room, leaving his father in a frame of mind not to be envied. His eyes

E

on fire his motions furious and convulsive-and his face alternately deformed with deadly red and pale, a true index of the stormy passions within. He has turned out of doors his only child-has turned him out in helpless inexperienced youth-not for any crime that he has done, nor for the shadow of a crime, but only for wishing to be more devout he sees the eyes of his son, glistening on him through tears, as he goes away— he hears the clap of the door behind him, and the sound of his departing feet, as it dies away along the descent of steps. All is silent, save the cries of his mother in her distant chamber, for her "poor banished boy." He rolls his eyes around him on his spacious halls and splendid furniture. "Sideboards! and clocks! and pictures! what are you all to a wounded spirit !”

To be wretched in poverty and obscurity were nothing. There would be no sting of disappointment to evenom the smart. But to be wretched in spite of titles-in spite of court favours-in spite of all his branching honours and golden treasures! this is hell unmixed. Alas! poor man! He is miserable but knows not the cause. He knows not that it proceeds, as his own child had told him, from lack of HUMILITY and

LOVE.

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But leaving the admiral and his grand castle and gaudy carpets, to confirm the words of eternal truth, that "a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things he possesseth," let us see what has become of William. Like the first ancestor, Adam, turned out of Paradise, so fared it with the youthful Penn, expelled from his father's house, some natural tears he shed, but wiped them soon." His conscience was clear; his heart was cheered; so, deep inhaling the luxom air, and breathing his pious ejaculations to heaven, he sprung forward to his journey, fully trusting in the promise that "all things shall work together for good to them that love God." His course, according to the aforesaid concert with his mother, was towards "the

traveller's rest," in Buckinghamshire, the elegant and hospitable mansion of his grandmother, who received him with exceeding joy. This great lady was pious in an uncommon degree; and having, just as William arrived, got a letter from her daughter, stating at large the history of this extraordinary transaction, she was so charmed with him on account of his early piety, tha+ her eyes sparkled on him with pleasure. "What, my dear, dear child," said she, pressing him to her bosom,

"sweet image of your mother!-turn you out of doors because you could not content yourself with being a poor dead formalist and hypocrite! Oh my Lord what will this world come to! parents turn their children out of doors only because they wish TO BE GOD'S CHILDREN! And worse still, can bear to see their children bloated with pride, pale with envy, burning with rage; and yet think them good enough if they have but been baptized, go regularly to church, say their prayers after the priest, and take the sacrament! Oh! what signify all these proud titles, and grand castles, and court-smiles, when their owners can be so blind and miserable!" I have not been able to ascertain how much time William passed in the society of his excellent grandmother; but it is more than probable that the days of his exile were not many. The heart of his father yearned towards his ruddy-cheeked boy; and this tender attraction, added to the eloquence of his lady's importunities, soon prevailed. William was, of course, recalled home, to the infinite joy of the whole family; not excepting the servants, who doted on him; for from his childhood, he was remarkable for his affectionate spirit to that despised class of people; always speaking to them with great tenderness, and often making them little presents-his excellent mother purposely furnishing him the means.

Finding that his seriousness still stuck to him, his father proposed to him a trip to Paris, begging he would make himself master of the French language,

which he said was always to his ear like music. But the admiral's principal motive was to divert his mind from what he called his fanaticism; with the hope, too, that from the mixture of William's extreme gravity, as he thought, with the excessive gaiety of the French, there would arise a tertium quid, a happy mediocrity of manners, that would render him the delight of the nation. To give this pill a richer gilding, and to render it more imposing on William's palate, the admiral took advantage of a party of young noblemen going over to the French capital; so dressing him up in the richest apparel, yet, as William begged, of a plain fashion, and filling his pockets with money and letters of introduction to great men, he packed him off for France.

CHAPTER XI.

THE admiral was not altogether disappointed in his calculations on the result of William's trip to France. The balmy softness of the climate-the rich variety and beauty of its scenes-its silver flood smoothly gliding along the verdant meadows, or boldly rushing through romantic hills adorned with clustering vines and snow-white castles, contributed much to dissipate the gloom occasioned by his late persecution. But far more exhilarating still were the manners of its inhabitants. William's natural bias was benevolence. The hand that made him had so kindly attuned his nerves to the harmonies of moral beauty, that every look and note of love awakened his soul to joy. Then among what people on earth could he have fallen with such chance of fascination as among the French? That extraordinary people, who study no science but to please who forget themselves, to make others happy—

and who with all they do, mingle so much of suavity and endearment, that whether they frown or smile, whether they grant or refuse, they almost equally oblige: for they frown with such delicacy, and refuse with such grace, that all must fall in love with them. William Penn fell in love with them, And as love naturally assimilates itself to the beloved, he quickly, as the apostle enjoins, in things indifferent, "became all things to them," he learned their language with the facility of a mocking-bird-he caught their manners by instinct --his limbs forgot their proud British stiffness-and his muscles their cold unlovely rigidity-and whether he stood or moved; whether he bowed or smiled; in standing, moving, bowing and smiling, shone forth the elegant and all accomplished Frenchman.

It was in this style that William, after twelve months' absence, presented himself before his father at Pennwood. The admiral was quite delighted with this "charming change," as he observed to Mrs. Penn, "that had taken place in William's appearance." He introduced him at court-he carried him about as in triumph among all his illustrious friends-and for fear he should relapse into his old gloomy ways, as he termed them, he resolved to send him over at once to Ireland, to take the management of an estate that had lately fallen to him in the neighbourhood of Dubfin, the metropolis. And to insure him a full round of dissipation, his pockets were filled with letters from the admiral's court friends, introducing him in the most flattering terms, to the lord lieutenant and his numerous friends, the great ones of Dublin. The calculation from all this was, that if William, now put into such a hopeful way, by the polite and sweetly mannered French, could but be associated for a season with the gay and warm-hearted Irish, he would be confirmed an elegant man of the world beyond the power of superstition to shake him.

The packet-boat soon wafted young William over