is gray and that some lines in his kindly face tell of sorrows as of
years, the vicar sits in his parlour; but the children no longer, blithe-
voiced and rose-cheeked, dart through the rustling espaliers. Those
children, grave men or staid matrons (save one whom Death chose, and
therefore now of all best beloved!) are at their posts in the world. The
young ones are flown from the nest, and, with anxious wings, here and
there, search food in their turn for their young. But the blithe voice
and rose-cheek of the child make not that loss which the hearth misses
the most. From childhood to manhood, and from manhood to departure, the
natural changes are gradual and prepared. The absence most missed is
that household life which presided, which kept things in order, and must
be coaxed if a chair were displaced. That providence in trifles, that
clasp of small links, that dear, bustling agency,--now pleased, now
complaining,--dear alike in each change of its humour; that active life
which has no self of its own; like the mind of a poet, though its prose
be the humblest, transferring self into others, with its right to be
cross, and its charter to scold; for the motive is clear,--it takes what
it loves too anxiously to heart. The door of the parlour is open, the
garden-path still passes before the threshold; but no step now has full
right to halt at the door and interrupt the grave thought on Greek texts;
no small talk on details and wise sayings chimes in with the wrath of
"Medea." The Prudent Genius is gone from the household; and perhaps as
the good scholar now wearily pauses, and looks out on the silent garden,
he would have given with joy all that Athens produced, from Aeschylus to
Plato, to hear again from the old familiar lips the lament on torn
jackets, or the statistical economy of eggs.

But see, though the wife is no more, though the children have departed,
the vicar's home is not utterly desolate. See, along the same walk on
which William soothed Susan's fears and won her consent,--see, what fairy