conveyance of his opinions and judgments over into her mind. His
various accomplishments went far in aid of his design. There was
hardly anything Helen could do that George could not do as well, and
some he could do better, while there were many things George was at
home in which were sealed to her. The satisfaction of teaching such
a pupil he found great. When at length he began to make love to her,
Helen found it rather agreeable than otherwise; and, if there was a
little more MAKING in it than some women would have liked, Helen was
not sufficiently in love with him to detect its presence. Still the
pleasure of his preference was such that it opened her mind with a
favourable prejudice towards whatever in the shape of theory or
doctrine he would have her receive; and much that a more experienced
mind would have rejected because of its evident results in practice,
was by her accepted in the ignorance which confined her regard of
his propositions to their intellectual relations, and prevented her
from following them into their influences upon life, which would
have reflected light upon their character. For life in its real
sense was to her as yet little more definite and present than a
dream that waits for the coming night. Hence, when her cousin at
length ventured to attack even those doctrines which all women who
have received a Christian education would naturally be expected to
revere the most, she was able to listen to him unshocked. But she
little thought, or he either, that it was only in virtue of what
Christian teaching she had had that she was capable of appreciating
what was grand in his doctrine of living for posterity without a
hope of good result to self beyond the consciousness that future
generations of perishing men and women would be a little more
comfortable, and perhaps a little less faulty therefrom. She did not
reflect, either, that no one's theory concerning death is of much
weight in his youth while life FEELS interminable, or that the gift