in any part of the kingdom, your miserable body shall be consumed by fire,
and your impious ashes scattered on the winds of heaven.

"Pere Rochelle."*

--
* I forewarn all my friends from thinking me capable of charging
this vile persecuting spirit on the "Old W---e of Rome" exclusively.
No, thank God, I have not so learned human nature. And they who are yet
to learn, may, by reading the "Catholic Layman", soon get satisfied,
that the PRIESTS are as apt to abuse power as the PEOPLE, and that,
when "clad with a little brief authority," protestants as well as papists,
have committed those cruelties which make milder devils blush.
[By way of a note on a note, I would observe, that the "Catholic Layman",
is a very sensible and spirited pamphlet; the production, it is said,
of Mathew Carey, Esq., of Philadelphia, who though a Roman Catholic,
has printed more protestant Bibles and Testaments
than half the preachers and printers in America put together.]
(Mathew Carey was also Weems' publisher. -- A. L., 1997.)
--


Had this dreadful letter been presented to Marion even while a bachelor,
it would have filled him with horror; for the heart naturally cleaves
to the spot where it awoke into being, and quits, with tearful eyes,
the scenes among which were spent the first and happiest days of life.
But ties stronger than those of nature bound Marion to his country.
His country was the country of his Louisa. How could he live without her?
And how could he hope that she would ever consent to leave
her parents and friends to wander and die with him in hopeless exile?