Printed by T. Booker, at the Metropolitan Catholic Printing Office,

9, Rupert Street, Leicester Square.

DILIGENCE;

OR,

Ethel Villiers, and her Slothful Friend.

Slothfulness casteth into a deep sleep, and an idle soul shall suffer hunger.-Prov. xix. 15.

THEL VILLIERS and Angela Templeton had been friends from childhood, but yet there were never two young persons whose characters and dispositions were so very dissimilar, as those whom we now introduce to our readers. Ethel was the second daughter of a gentleman of large property, whilst Angela was the youngest of a large family,

and her father, who rented a house belonging to Mr. Villiers, was in very narrow circumstances. Angela and Ethel had both grown up from childhood into girlhood at the Benedic

tine convent, in which they had been educated; and on the return of Angela to the village of Elmwood, in Shropshire, where her family resided, six months after Ethel had left the convent, the latter immediately renewed the intimacy with her young friend. Elmwood Hall was but a few minutes' walk from the cottage inhabited by the Templetons, and thus it was very rarely that a day passed without the two friends meeting each other. Ethel Villiers was of a very pious turn of mind; she was intelligent and generous, and had a love of humility which is rarely to be found. Ethel was condescending and affable to all; if her mother wished a bottle of wine or a nourishing article to be taken to the village to any sick person, it was her greatest delight to place the parcel in her muff, or under her shawl, and carry it herself, and she had not been long at Elmwood before she became a general favourite. Angela was also blessed with a good and kind heart, but she had yielded from childhood to one passion, one deadly sin, which obscured the brighter traits in her character, and which the nuns had vainly striven to eradicate; and this besetting sin was sloth. It was often considered strange, that characters so dis

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similar as those of Ethel and Angela, so opposite in every respect to each other, should ever have framed such an attachment, but so it was; and there were some among the pensioners who said, that it was Ethel Villiers' piety and goodness which led her, as she advanced in life, to make herself the constant companion of the slothful and indolent Angela, in the hope, which they feared would prove fruitless, that she should be able to work a reform. But be this as it may, certain it was that Ethel herself was the first, on Angela's arrival home, to make overtures for a renewal of their old friendship. The situation in life which the Templetons held was, as far as wealth went, far beneath that of Ethel's family, and they were gratified that such a friendship was established between their daughter and a young person who might, in many ways, be enabled to befriend her in her course through life.

Who shall tell the numerous faults into which this one great sin frequently betrayed Angela? Slothful at her prayers, and in her ordinary devotions, she frequently was. "There is time enough," she would say when the hour struck which, at the convent, had been devoted to the