yet they are perpetually reasoning! They will neither rest themselves
nor let any one else rest. He confessed it, and said, "The state of
mind is very much as you have described it; and you have described
it so exactly, that I almost think you, my dear uncle, must know the
heart of a sceptic, and have been one yourself some time or other!"

We wound up the morning, which was beautiful, by taking a ride, in the
course of which I was amused with an instance of the sensitiveness with
which Harrington's cultivated mind recoiled from the grossness of vulgar
and ignorant infidelity. We called at the cottage of a little farmer, a
tenant of his, somewhat notorious both for profanity and sensuality.
Presuming, I suppose, on his young landlord's suspected heterodoxy, and
thinking, perhaps, to curry favor with him, he ventured (I know not what
led to it) to indulge in some stupid joke about the legion and the herd
of swine. "Sir," said he, scratching his head, "the Devil, I reckon,
must have been a more clever fellow than I thought, to make two thousand
hogs go down a steep place into the sea; it is hard enough even to make
them go where they will, and almost impossible make them go where they
won't."

"The Devil, my good friend," said Harrington, very gravely, "is a very
clever fellow; and I hope you do not for a moment intend to compare
yourself with him. As to the supposed miracle, it would, no doubt,
be hard to say which were most to be pitied, the devils in the swine,
or the swine with the devils in them; but has it never struck you that
the whole may be an allegorical representation of the miserable and
destructive effects of the union of the two vices of sensuality and
profanity? They also (if all tales be true) lead to a steep place, but
I have never heard that it ends in the water. Now," he continued, "I
dare say you would laugh at that story which the Roman Catholics