heart into an energy incompatible with natural benevolence, and the
perception of those tender ties which spring up from the relations of
domestic life. For a considerable time this struggle between the two
principles went on; sometimes a new hope would spring up, attended in
the background by a thousand affecting circumstances--on the other hand,
some gloomy and undefinable dread of exigency, distress, and ruin,
would wring his heart and sink his spirits down to positive misery.
Notwithstanding this conflict between growing avarice and affection,
the star of the father's love had risen, and though, as we have already
said, its light was dim and unsteady, yet the moment a single opening
occurred in the clouded mind, there it was to be seen serene and pure,
a beautiful emblem of undying and solitary affection struggling with
the cares and angry passions of life. By degrees, however, the
husband's heart became touched by the hopes of his younger years,
former associations revived, and remembrances of past tenderness, though
blunted in a heart so much changed, came over him like the breath
of fragrance that has nearly passed away. He began, therefore, to
contemplate the event without foreboding, and by the time the looked-for
period arrived, if the world and its debasing influences were not
utterly overcome, yet nature and the quickening tenderness of a father's
feeling had made a considerable progress in a heart from which they had
been long banished. Far different from all this was the history of
his wife since her perception of an event so delightful. In her was no
bitter and obstinate principle subversive of affection to be overcome.
For although she had in latter years sank into the painful apathy of a
hopeless spirit, and given herself somewhat to the world, yet no sooner
did the unexpected light dawn upon her, than her whole soul was filled
with exultation and delight. The world and its influence passed away
like a dream, and her heart melted into a habit of tenderness at once
so novel and exquisite, that she often assured her husband she had never