education of his children--a task for which he was peculiarly
qualified. Then a series of calamities fell upon him: he lost his
boy, a child of wonderful ability and sweetness; he lost his
fortune, or the greater part of it. The latter calamity he bore
with perfect imperturbability--they let their house and moved into
Gloucestershire. Here a certain measure of happiness seemed to
return to him. He made a new friend, as the Diary relates, in the
person of the Squire of the village, a man who, though an invalid,
had a strong and almost mystical hold upon life. Here he began to
interest himself in the people of the place, and tried all sorts of
education and social experiments. But his wife fell ill, and died
very suddenly; and, not long after, his daughter died too. He was
for a time almost wholly broken down. I went abroad with him at his
request for a few weeks, but I was myself obliged to return to
England to my professional duties. I can only say that I did not
expect ever to see him again. He was like a man, the spring of
whose life was broken; but at the same time he bore himself with a
patience and a gentleness that fairly astonished me. We were
together day by day and hour by hour. He made no complaint, and he
used to force himself, with what sad effort was only too plain, to
converse on all sorts of topics. Some time after he drifted back to
England; but at first he appeared to be in a very listless and
dejected state. Then there arrived, almost suddenly, it seemed to
me, a change. He had made the sacrifice; he had accepted the
situation. There came to him a serenity which was only like his old
serenity from the fact that it seemed entirely unaffected; but it
was based, I felt, on a very different view of life. He was now
content to wait and to believe. It was at this time that the Squire
died; and not long afterwards, the Squire's niece, a woman of great
strength and simplicity of character, married a clergyman to whom