nations, corrupted by a profligate ancestry, or prostituted by their own inherent vicfes have been wrecked on the shoals of national decay, the spirit of Plymouth Rock, misguided, but conscientious, will outlive the errors of a few generations, and land us safely in the haven of universal toleration without regard to clime, color, sex or condition, recognizing only the brotherhood of the human race.
Alfred Claremont and Marianne Beaufort might have been called the representatives of the two antipodes of theology and religion. She was emphatically a child of nature. Her parents died when she was very young, leaving her to the care of a maiden sister of her father, who, if she did not enter so readily as some into the sports of children, or understand so well the thousand little wants of their minds, certainly possessed one eminent quality, that of caring for their physical education.
She allowed her free exercise in the open air, and never interfered with her own choice of enjoyment. There was not a hill or valley, wood or stream, for miles around that she had not explored. Possessing a healthy, happy temperament, and a contemplative mind, she grew and expanded into luxurious bloom under the joyous, cloudless sky of nature, through which she looked up to God as a tender, loving Father, who had made this earth so rich in beauty and so lavish in its gifts to man.
Her spiritual organization was such that it was safer to trust her to her own instincts than to attempt to control it, and she had never met with those conflicting influences that sometimes warp and harm
