"It was a wholesome bitter for us; and it may be so for you likewise:
but we will have no sad forebodings on the eve of the blessed
Christmas-tide. He lives, He loves, He reigns; and all is well, for we
are His, and He is ours."

"Ah," said Stangrave, "when Emerson sneered at you English for
believing your Old Testament, he little thought that that was the
lesson which it had taught you; and that that same lesson was the
root of all your greatness. That that belief in God's being, in some
mysterious way, the living King of England and of Christendom, has
been the very idea which has kept you in peace and safety, now for
many a hundred years, moving slowly on from good to better, not
without many backslidings and many shortcomings, but still finding
out, quickly enough, when you were on the wrong road, and not ashamed
to retrace your steps, and to _reform_, as brave strong men should
dare to do; a people who have been for many an age in the vanguard
of all the nations, and the champions of sure and solid progress
throughout the world; because what is new among you is not patched
artificially on to the old, but grows organically out of it, with
a growth like that of your own English oak, whose every new-year's
leaf-crop is fed by roots which burrow deep in many a buried
generation, and the rich soil of full a thousand years."

"Stay!" said the little artist. "We are quite conceited enough
already, without your eloquent adulation, sir! But there is a truth
in your words. There is a better spirit roused among us, and that
not merely of two years ago. I knew this part of the country well in
1846-7-8, and since then, I can bear witness, a spirit of self-reform
has been awakened round here, in many a heart which I thought once