a softer and a fresher verdure. Although their present neighbours were
unacquainted with the events of their earlier life previous to their
settlement at ----------, it was known that they had been wealthy at the
time they first came to reside there, and that, by a series of
fatalities, they had lost all. But Clifford had borne up manfully
against fortune; and in a new country, where men who prefer labour to
dependence cannot easily starve, he had been enabled to toil upward
through the severe stages of poverty and hardship with an honesty and
vigour of character which won him, perhaps, a more hearty esteem for
every successive effort than the display of his lost riches might ever
have acquired him. His labours and his abilities obtained gradual but
sure success; and he now enjoyed the blessings of a competence earned
with the most scrupulous integrity, and spent with the most kindly
benevolence. A trace of the trials they had passed through was
discernible in each; those trials had stolen the rose from the wife's
cheek, and had sown untimely wrinkles in the broad brow of Clifford.
There were moments, too, but they were only moments, when the latter sank
from his wonted elastic and healthful cheerfulness of mind into a gloomy
and abstracted revery; but these moments the wife watched with a jealous
and fond anxiety, and one sound of her sweet voice had the power to
dispel their influence; and when Clifford raised his eyes, and glanced
from her tender smile around his happy home and his growing children, or
beheld through the very windows of his room the public benefits he had
created, something of pride and gladness glowed on his countenance, and
he said, though with glistening eyes and subdued voice, as his looks
returned once more to his wife, "I owe these to thee!"

One trait of mind especially characterized Clifford,--indulgence to the
faults of others. "Circumstances make guilt," he was wont to say; "let
us endeavour to correct the circumstances, before we rail against the