Page:Modern Literature Volume 3 (1804).djvu/67

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hypocrite, this blasphemer of religion." The ladies now retiring, our hero learned from the stranger, that he was a gentleman who had a moderate estate near Tewkesbury, that he had for several years been the husband of a farmer's daughter whom he had married for love, and they had lived in the most perfect happiness. His wife possessing great sensibility, and a romantic fancy, had, in the course of a visit at Bristol, been carried to one of the meetings of Moravians, or other fanatic adventures there, she had imbibed a liking for visionary absurdities, and soon became the professed devotee of the romances of methodism. Though he saw the change with regret, yet not apprehending the moral depravity that so naturally results from a system which enchains the understanding, and unmuzzles all the wild impetuosity of passion; which de-