mingling formality and grotesqueness.

And the next day the hounds met at Castle Irksham. And that day Colonel
Cathcart would ride with them.

For the good man had gathered spirit just as the light grew upon his
daughter's face. And he was merry like a boy now that the first breath of
spring--for so it seemed, although no doubt plenty of wintriness remained
and would yet show itself--had loosened the hard hold of the frost, which
is the death of Nature. The frost is hard upon old people; and the spring
is so much the more genial and blessed in its sweet influences on them. Do
we grow old that, in our weakness and loss of physical self-assertion, we
may learn the benignities of the universe--only to be learned first
through the feeling of their want?--I do not envy the man who laughs the
east wind to scorn. He can never know the balmy power of its sister of the
west, which is the breath of the Lord, the symbol of the one _genial_
strength at the root of all life, resurrection, and growth--commonly
called the Spirit of God.--Who has not seen, as the infirmities of age
grow upon old men, the haughty, self-reliant spirit that had neglected, if
not despised the gentle ministrations of love, grow as it were a little
scared, and begin to look about for some kindness; begin to return the
warm pressure of the hand, and to submit to be waited upon by the anxiety
of love? Not in weakness alone comes the second childhood upon men, but
often in childlikeness; for in old age as in nature, to quote the song of
the curate,

Old Autumn's fingers
Paint in hues of Spring.

The necessities of the old man prefigure and forerun the dawn of the