disturbed the tranquil dignity of his ordinary
bearing. I placed a chair for him, and he sat
down in silence—a silence which for some
moments I felt almost afraid to break. At
length I said in a low voice, " Has anything
occurred to distress you, Sir?"

"No, Edward," he replied, slowly and like
one who has some difficulty in collecting his
thoughts, " nothing that ought to distress
me; but I am very weak; my faith is very
weak—and I heard it suddenly. I have
heard, to-night," he continued, after a pause,
and speaking more continuously, " of the
death of a lady whom I used to know many
years ago. She was young and full of life
when I knew her. I have always thought
of her as so young, so full of life, that the
great change to death seems almost impossible.
Edward, you will not think me wearisome
if I speak to you of what was, long and
long ago, before you were born, when your
mother was still a child."

I assured him by my looks rather than
by my words, of the interest with which I
should listen. He sank again into silence;
but, after a considerable interval during which
he seemed to be collecting his thoughts, he
resumed.

"My father, as you know, was the head of
the younger branch of the great Northumberland
family of the Watsons; my mother
was a daughter of Sir George Mildmay of
Cobham Hall. I refer to these
circumstances, not from any pride that I take in
having what is termed good blood in my
veins, but merely because they exercise an
important influence over my life. When a
child, I was very much spoilt, for I was
considered handsome and intelligent, and my
mother was proud of me. She was a woman
of few but strong affections and of a very
decided will. My father, who had been a
soldier, contented himself with maintaining
almost military discipline in his household,
but left to my mother the internal administration
of affairs. Feeling unconsciously the
superior activity of her mind, he allowed
himself to depend, in all important matters,
on her judgment. They were united by a
very strong attachment founded on a
similarity of principles—prejudices perhaps, in
some cases—and favoured not a little by the
difference of their physical constitutions.
The fine proportions of my father's figure,
and his great manly beauty, gave him such a
material superiority to my mother—who was
small and delicately made, and withal not
handsome—that he with greater ease
submitted to her moral supremacy; and, without
knowing it, allowed his mind to be fed and
guided by hers. For a long time I was an
only child—your mother, as you know, is ten
years younger than I—so that the absence of
play-fellows and companions of my own age
fostered—perhaps created—in me a pensive
and meditative disposition; an inclination to
dwell upon small incidents, to keep my
emotions secret, to repress the outward show of
feeling—but to feel only the more deeply.

"I was brought up at Rugby, and the
independent citizens of our rough school republic
were the only associates of my boyhood.
During the holidays indeed my mother used
to take me to Cobham Hall, the seat of my
uncle Mildmay, where I used to see my
cousin Grace, a girl of somewhat about my
own age. But she was never away from
her governess, and was so demure and
ladylike that I was afraid to speak to her. My
mother always expressed a great affection for
Grace, and when she wrote to me at school,
especially as I began to grow older, there was
invariably some mention of her in her letters,
as, " Your cousin Grace, whom I saw yesterday,
sends her love;" or, " I went to Cobham
a few days since; they are all well, your
cousin Grace is growing fast, her figure
promises to be very fine, she hopes to see you
soon and sends her love." And so matters
went on, till the time came for me to leave
Rugby, when my mother informed me that,
as there was a good living in the family, she
and my father and my uncle wished me to go
into the church.

"I am sorry to say, Edward, that although
I was then nineteen, I had never seriously
thought of my future calling; my wants had
always been carefully provided for; and, in
the security of a contemplative temperament,
I had glided down the stream of time with
very little perception of the nobler portions
of my nature, of my higher capacity for
enjoyment and for suffering. My mother's
proposal I acceded to without difficulty, and
without any serious reflection. So, I went to
Oxford, met many of my old Rugby associates
there, and lived very much as I had lived
before: only spending a little more money.
But this was not to continue—I was to be
roused from this spiritual torpor; I was to
learn what was in me. If the lesson was
bitter, it was wholesome; and I can re-echo
that deep and wise saying of one of your
modern poets, Edward, which is the fruit of
suffering:

' Better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.'

I went to spend part of the summer vacation
of the year eighteen hundred and ten—I
have good reason to remember the year—
with a friend at his father's house, a pleasant
place in the neighbourhood of Warwick.
There were no field sports to beguile the
time; and Topham and I were neither of us
fond of study, so that we had some difficulty
in disposing of our leisure. Colonel Topham,
my friend's father, was little better off in
this respect than ourselves—he could hardly
find occupation for himself during more than
three or four hours in the morning, so it was
with great exultation, that one afternoon
on his return from Warwick, he brought us
the intelligence that the Theatre was to be