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at the farthest. All my plans are destroyed in one unlucky hour. I had succeeded in establishing myself here in the estate of my late brother-in-law, the Laird of St. Clyde, by purchasing the mortgage of his estate; but the son of St. Clyde, who was supposed to have fallen by the sword of our countrymen on the Heights of Abraham, has returned after a long absence; and the prejudices of the ignorant, clanish people attach them more to this young man than they were to his father. It is true the misfortunes of his family gave him a relation to the sympathies of their nature; and so powerful are Highland attachment and the force of prejudices against every thing exotic, particularly my holding by rent the caim of St. Clyde, that my sons, being disgusted with these islanders, have left me and gone to the West-Indies, and I shall not

sleep till I have gone out of this disagreeable place also; I purpose to go to a remote part of the Highlands, till I can get a vessel going to France. I have sacrificed my all to gain an estate, which I leave with feelings no human being would envy. I shall never be happy; pray find me a retreat where I may live from the observation of men, and devote the remainder of my life to the duties and services of religion. The consolations of the most Christian and catholic religion I cannot enjoy amongst these Calvinistic heretics. Perhaps it is the want of the consolations of the religion. of the holy city of Rome, that makes me so miserable. Ah! my friend, how devoid of elegance of composition, and logical division, are the sermons of the minister of religion here. It is true, Mr. Thornhill's people do not require him to preach in fine lan

guage; it is not necessary to their salvation, he says: plain speech, common sense, and primitive, rational religion-these are his words. How desultory his arguments! he can make no nice deductions to flow from the most luminous and well arranged premises. It is ah! it is my misfortune, in hearing this minister of this religion preach on Sunday, that during the week I am subjected to the pursuit of my favourite studies, to investigations that will not allow of extraneous illustrations, nor forced conclusions. Faith, the grand primum nomen of this religion, is so is so completely banished in the prosecution of my favourite experiments on chemistry, that I have previously to arrange my mind to the reception of the doctrine of Mr. Thornhill, and then cease to doubt what is not deducible as are the consequences of science.

"Oh! how I envy the man whose mind is not racked like mine, but who from the bosom of his family, and in the homely garb of his six days' labour, comes forth on Sunday clean, happy in face, free in mind from lessons of subtile enquiry, to hear and believe every dogma this preacher thunders out. The satisfaction which the truths or errors these country-people have heard, the peace they produce in their hearts, and the moral influence they have on their conduct, I covet, but cannot enjoy. I am not blessed with the same simplicity and facility to credit the ever varying, contradictory, repugnant themes of the Calvinist, to whom what he advances, and at my peril bids me reject, is, I presume, as incomprehensible as it is to hapless me, whose difficulty to admit impossibilities subjects to pyrrhonism and the odious character of heretic and unbe

liever of the most holy and Christian church of St. Peter, and his vicar at Rome. I must return to the bosom of the holy Gospel, and the Catholic church, and the mass, and the sacraments of the religion of the pious Fenelon; but to do this I must return to France, and leave these deluded Calvinists to perish with my property. I have been too prolific; but you are my pastor, my confessor, and I look for your merciful forgiveness for the errors of my life. Adieu, I embrace you as my father, I kneel as your son, your unhappy son; pray for my safe arrival to your arms.

L. VILLEJUIVE.

"To the Rev. M. M. V., St. Omer."

This letter Andrew Gillies brought to Levingstone; and the feelings of Mr. Thornhill were not shocked by a perusal of that part which related to him

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