Page images
PDF
EPUB

guest; "it is a spurious charity to credit mere professions against the demonstration of facts,-in opposition to the solemn and deliberate decrees of councils,-the Encyclical letters and injunctions of popes,-missals, prayer-books, creeds, printed and published, and the various doctrinal works of the Romish priesthood. One fact, my dear madam, is worth ten thousand words. It is the grain compared with the chaff,-the fruit with the leaves."

"After so strongly expressed an opinion," exclaimed the half-affrighted hostess, as the golden vision for her daughter appeared dissolving away, "you will, I am sure, pardon me, if I request you to show to me some of the documentary proofs to which you have so pointedly alluded. My motive for asking for them is this, that should we eventually refuse Mr. Merton's offer to my daughter, we may be able to confront his declarations with decisive evidence to the contrary, such as you have referred to, and so terminate the affair."

“You have an undoubted right to demand them," said Mrs. Gracelove; " and if you had not, candour and a sense of duty would call upon me to produce them. You shall see these written tests the moment I can procure them from Derwent Cottage, and for which I will write immediately. Had I entertained the smallest suspicion of what was to be the subject of our conference, I would have brought them along with me."

The letter was written in the course of the same morning, and committed to the post; and as the packet could not arrive before the second day following, it was proposed that they should fill up the interval by enjoying a sail on the lake, which was fixed for the succeeding day.

Ullswater is considered by some to present an assemblage of the beauties of all the other lakes. In dimensions it is the largest, with the exception of Windermere; being about nine

[merged small][graphic][merged small][merged small]
« PreviousContinue »