are best tried. What is there more beautiful than to see that fountain
of tenderness multiplying its affections instead of diminishing them,
according as claim after claim arises to make fresh demands upon its
love? Love, and especially parental love, like jealousy, increases
by what it feeds on. But, oh! from what an unknown world of exquisite
enjoyment are they shut out, to whom Providence has not vouchsafed
those beloved beings on whom the heart lavishes the whole fulness of its
rapture! No wonder that their own affections should wither in the cold
gloom of disappointed hope, or their hearts harden into that moody
spirit of worldly-mindedness which adopts for its offspring the miser's
idol.

Whether Fardorougha felt the want of children acutely or otherwise,
could not be inferred from any visible indication of regret on his part
by those who knew him. His own wife, whose facilities of observation
were so great and so frequent, was only able to suspect in the
affirmative. For himself he neither murmured nor repined; but she could
perceive that, after a few years had passed, a slight degree of gloom
began to settle on him, and an anxiety about his crops, and his few
cattle, and the produce of his farm. He also began to calculate the
amount of what might be saved from the fruits of their united industry.
Sometimes, but indeed upon rare occasions, his temper appeared inclining
to be irascible or impatient; but in general it was grave, cold,
and inflexible, without any outbreaks of passion, or the slightest
disposition to mirth. His wife's mind, however, was by no means so firm
as his, nor so free from the traces of that secret regret which preyed
upon it. She both murmured and repined, and often in terms which drew
from Fardorougha a cool rebuke for her want of resignation to the will
of God. As years advanced, however, her disappointment became harassing
even to herself, and now that hope began to die away, her heart