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DUTY AND INCLINATION.
3

us from a frequency of beholding them. When, turning with reluctance from this beautiful landscape, his eyes rested upon his mansion, he sighed; thoughts the most painful crowded upon and agitated him, as he stood contemplating the elegant structure. The persecutions, losses, and disappointments he had sustained arose in terrible array before him; whilst his misery was aggravated by the reflection, that every sanguine hope he had once indulged in of aggrandisement for himself, and consequently for his rising family, was completely baffled. Endued with the best and kindest feelings that ever graced humanity, he was yet acutely aware that the misfortunes he lamented had not fatality solely for their origin, but existed chiefly in his own errors of judgment,—his deficiency in a sound, solid, and reflective understanding. Of great impetuosity of feelings, he never could command their first impulse; but when the ebullition of them had subsided, he sunk into the calmness of resignation; for in addition to the consciousness of blessings still reserved to him under the joint relation of husband and father, he could support misfortune with the most Christian fortitude. To yield himself to vain repinings for past afflictions, he justly considered, would only render those of the present more acute, and ener-