"'Farewell, dear flowers, sweetly your time ye spent,
Fit, while ye lived, for smell or ornament,
And after death for cures;
I follow straight without complaints or grief,
Since if my scent be good, I care not if
It be as short as yours.'"

This is our only relation; and do you wonder that, whether our days
are dark or bright, we naturally speak of our cousin the curate? There
is no nursery longer, for the children are grown; but I have seen Prue
stand, with her hand holding the door, for an hour, and looking into
the room now so sadly still and tidy, with a sweet solemnity in her
eyes that I will call holy. Our children have forgotten their old
playmate, but I am sure if there be any children in his parish, over
the sea, they love our cousin the curate, and watch eagerly for his
coming. Does his step falter now, I wonder, is that long, fair hair,
gray; is that laugh as musical in those distant homes as it used to be
in our nursery; has England, among all her good and great men, any man
so noble as our cousin the curate?

The great book is unwritten; the great deeds are undone; in no
biographical dictionary will you find the name of our cousin the
curate. Is his life, therefore, lost? Have his powers been wasted?

I do not dare to say it; for I see Bourne, on the pinnacle of
prosperity, but still looking sadly for his castle in Spain; I see
Titbottom, an old deputy book-keeper, whom nobody knows, but with his
chivalric heart, loyal to whatever is generous and humane, full of
sweet hope, and faith, and devotion; I see the superb Aurelia, so