her native cheerfulness, her wise courage and her healthy heart-lightness, all at once contended. But from the exercise of this minor spiritual tyranny, unwonted no less than unwilling, an occurrence of Cecilia's thirteenth year for ever relieved her.

On no account would the dear little one have transgressed this prohibition, directed in general terms against some certain authors, Sir Walter Scott included. But of the titles of the specific works she was naturally ignorant. Thus when one dear child (then no more to me than other children)-not celebrated for early studiousness-(and Eleanor will pardon her husband both allusions!)-when this neighbour and playmate one summer's holiday brought over to Ardeley a copy of "Marmion," deficient, like most child-favourites, in the due honour of title page, our unsuspecting Cecilia gave her assistance at once in explanation of certain imaginative passages that were a distress and a perplexity to her simplehearted companion. Deep in the poem, retained after Eleanor's departure, the youthful commentator had already plunged, when the remark at a few day's later breakfast-table "You have been at Edinburgh, mamma; did you see any ghosts and trumpets now on the High Cross"? put forth gaily with earnest conviction, awakened a glance of terror from one, and a smile on the face of others.-But it was now too late; the precautions had been unconsciously evaded; the revelation and the discovery were already made :-and, like other discomfited generals, her mother satisfied herself with the just conviction, that, all things considered,-the inevitable nature of the accident, and Cecilia's strong good sense her Index of books prohibited to the little daughter might be now put aside with safety.

Henceforth, what my father and I myself had long seen, with wonder it could be hidden from her modest eyes, she now recognised-that the sole enthusiasm her little daughter did not submit to the control of reason was the energy of that holy affection, excess in which is scarce within reach of human capacity. On no other ground was there ground for alarm. For since Cecilia had been in possession of the dreaded treasure, some days had already past: she had put her question with a smile: had she suffered by this abrupt introduction to the Supernatural ?-and that conveyed in no nurse's tale, but with all the conviction that a "printed book" bears to the mind of childhood. The experiment was held conclusive; the prohibition and the anxiety removed, and her mother enfranchised by Cecilia's freedom.

Unaided however by such accident, this solitude would of itself have subsided, by the spontaneous disappearance of any reason. For the tranquil months soon bore Cecilia onwards to that most happy time, happier to most, perhaps, then actual childhood, when hope and buoyant courage, and the blindness by which the courage of youth is unfailingly accompanied, extinguish by their over-powering brightness every shadow of conscious foreboding. These years were a time of transition, which I may myself here pass over. The inward service of mind and soul grew wider with our darling Cecilia's advancing girlhood; as she laid aside her toys, she left the age when she was herself our plaything. The girl became the dearer companion, whilst the enthusiasm of her passion, withdrawing from the observation of most, and passing into cheerful activity, seemed henceforward to diffuse itself into an affection as equable and as pure as any child has lavished on a mother.

CHAPTER V.

But my father, of whom I have now to make mention, as afterwards I was made aware, at no time lost sight of Cecilia's characteristic temperament. How much in her's resembled his own I shall never know; but some points in the resemblance were obvious. There was the same temperateness in judgment; the same love of solitude and study for their own blessed and peculiar privileges; the same capability of enthusiasm. Yet this I think was rather roused in my father by his own solitary meditations, or by interfusion (if the phrase may be risked) of the life-blood of the master-spirits, as he studied Plato and the Poets, and thought called to thought from the dead and the distant;-in Cecilia rather by circumstances affecting the human passions, or anything that appeared vitally to touch her mother. Thus also, in matters requiring judgment, my sister was in a certain sense the most practical: more completely or at least more constantly Woman, than he, Man: in a word the more perfect creature. Yet in other points the likeness was maintained. For he in youth had undergone one great grief, from some misjudging choice, I believe, in early friendship: and refusing to disguise from himself (after the manner of most men, insusceptible of depth in pain and pleasure) his own calamity, had recognised its greatness, faced

the truth, mastered the despair, and received the reward of Heaven's consolation. And he too in earlier childhood, before such mastery is possible, had exhibited, according to a confession drawn from him in Cecilia's defence on an occasion already referred to,-the same waywardness of passionate love, the same haunting fancies of the child's populous solitude, and the same liability to hours of overpowering excitement. But this had long past now, and as we thought, for ever. The troubled delight of passion had retired before the security of his wedded love the little cares of household activity restrained the agitated calm of reverie and of solitude. For his, if Activity be justly estimated, was an active existence maintaining against the indolence and the distractions of completed manhood the generally rare and unwelcome exercise of thought; yet not suffering it to intrude on most faithful service to the requirements of a profession gladly adopted at his parent's desire; nor again to bar him from lighter and more social accomplishments :-a life past in the fulfilment of every graceful duty, and every duty of grace.

The necessary labours of a parish priest and the claims on the head of the family left my father many intervals of leisure for the studies congenial from youth to his disposition, keen for intellectual advance, and capable as, I have observed, of continuous meditation. And happy for him that it was so! Excepting direct religious consolations, against our inevitable griefs, Heaven I think gives us two main remedies; the love of books, and the love of nature:-friends to sorrow, when a friend's face makes us only the more sorrowful. Men limited to "practical activity," and saved so from the more poignant feelings of the imaginative temperament, yet from that very incapacity, in suffering truly suffer most; either unable to find consolation, and disperse the consuming atmosphere of despair by recurrence to their customary and mechanical duties, or driving aside their grief too rudely, and burying it in the turmoil and dust of life-alike to be judged pitiable, whether sinking beneath their loss, or not gaining by it. For the truth of feeling is proportioned to its intensity, as the deepest wells are the purest.

Returning now to my father, though wherever he saw cause for admiration, happy to admire, yet it was his habit to read but few books: but those well, and confining himself steadily to the best. For the great minds of every age, he held, contain by implication the thoughts of the multitude: they interpret their century, whilst they outrun it while further, from that closer union between the word and the idea which only

the highest masters can effect, their thoughts are presented with a pregnant vitality, operative on the reader's mind with an energy not otherwise attainable. Crystallized in the purest and most transparent language, and like crystal, severe in form whilst tender in colour, the creations of perfect genius alone, he would say, like the charmed lens of the ancient astrologer, can reveal to us the more retired mysteries of the universe. Who could think so, and not be content if the masterworks of Hellenic imagination (comparatively few) had formed his whole secular library? The Greeks on the whole were a nation so self-contained, and no printingpress yet in existence, that it must have been so with their writers. So vast however is the wealth of our later age that we can speak of the masterworks within our command as many: and a great skill in several languages, German I believe not included, enabled my father to indulge the fancy of rarely quitting these Elysian Fields of high thought and poetry.

But it was of course his English reading that touched us, the children, most nearly. On how many evenings did he leave Pascal, or Dante, or the golden pages, describing the "City of God," or those (perhaps dearer still) where "yesterday's going down to Piraeus" leads by magic mazes to the region of Plato's mysterious commonwealth,-how often, to read some choice poem, Milton and Shakespeare, or Wordsworth when he fondly hoped years had brought his children the more philosophic mind, whilst we drew or worked in the aimless variety of childhood: thinking the hour perhaps long, yet dimly enjoying it beyond the least restrained, most thoughtless playtime. How often whilst our mother asked some explanation, or suggested a different, and we sat listening to the contest between wit and wisdom, did we resent Marie's appearance, and beg her to go without delivering her message, as she called him away to Hall or Study, to give counsel or to set forth with assistance to the sick and the distressed of Ardeley.

Such, as regarded himself, was my father's "realized ideal" of life. To us, the children, there was always playfulness the most winning and the most affectionate: counsels were ready for the occasion, but a high and religious aim to shun any direction that might by chance interfere with what gifts and inborn character Heaven had granted us. the highest matters indeed our Father held a gracious and impressive reserve; a course almost inevitable, when any thoughtful man weighs the transcendant importance and mystery of holy things, the danger and

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difficulty of setting them, even with approximation to their whole truth, before a child's mind, and the dearness of his own little ones. For such messages God has in truth provided a fitter angel. And well could he justify his reserve, if it needed justification, by that deep confidence (the reward of perfect affection, and more on this subject I cannot speak)which for so many years of blessedness God allowed him to repose on the wise and tender courage, the absolute love and watchfulness of the honoured mother of his children.

CHAPTER VI.

A mother's watchfulness in its highest degree was in truth before long required on a dear daughter's behalf. Cecilia had scarcely passed from the promising child into the maiden rich in promises deeper and more secure (for their fulfilment was already with them), when within a few months before her seventeenth birthday she was loved, sought, and betrothed; and this with as much general satisfaction resulting as a bridegroom can expect to meet with, when his chosen is the "bright desire" and central darling of a family. It was a connection to be followed, in the quiet course of things, by a second, making one house at last of Ardeley and Fountainhall. Lady F—, who presided over the only other mansion of the neighbourhood and six growing daughters, pronounced the whole a preconcerted scheme of Mrs. Marlowe; a person, she was pleased to say, so much deeper than she looked:-but when Robert Therfield first presented himself in a suitor's guise, none of our family, I believe, had thought of his in the light of possible, probable, or even absolutely desirable connections. To state the reason in the fewest words; the Fountainhall children were then in the background of youth and reserve, and the parents hardly beyond the verge of acquaintance (although friendly) with ours. They were only our nearest neighbours, a position compatible in quiet Hertfordshire with an interchange of small amiable courtesies, with lendings, and borrowings, and a frequency of intercommunication, that in London might no doubt have been compromising. But here this implied of necessity little more than community of plate on occasion of great festivities, transfers of game in September, and perpetual proximity of name in subscription lists for local charity.

It was a surprise to me, returning home for my second College summer