that still point and barb the anguish of local recollections, telling
me of this and that celestial morning that never shall return, and of
too blessed expectations, travelling like yourselves through a heavenly
zodiac of changes, till at once and for ever they sank into the grave!
Often do I think of seeking for some quiet cell either in the Tropics
or in Arctic latitudes, where the changes of the year, and the external
signs corresponding to them, express themselves by no features like
those in which the same seasons are invested under our temperate
climes: so that, if knowing, we cannot at least feel the identity of
their revolutions. We were married, I have said, on the birthday--the
seventeenth birthday--of Agnes; and pretty nearly on her eighteenth it
was that she placed me at the summit of my happiness, whilst for
herself she thus completed the circle of her relations to this life's
duties, by presenting me with a son. Of this child, knowing how
wearisome to strangers is the fond exultation of parents, I shall
simply say, that he inherited his mother's beauty; the same touching
loveliness and innocence of expression, the same chiselled nose, mouth,
and chin, the same exquisite auburn hair. In many other features, not
of person merely, but also of mind and manners, as they gradually began
to open before me, this child deepened my love to him by recalling the
image of his mother; and what other image was there that I so much
wished to keep before me, whether waking or asleep? At the time to
which I am now coming but too rapidly, this child, still our only one,
and unusually premature, was within four months of completing his third
year; consequently Agnes was at that time in her twenty-first year; and
I may here add, with respect to myself, that I was in my twenty-sixth.

But, before I come to that period of wo, let me say one word on the
temper of mind which so fluent and serene a current of prosperity may
be thought to have generated. Too common a course I know it is, when