He bought her the last complete edition of Lord Byron's poetry, and Charlotte bathed in that not very wholesome stream, and produced some imitative stanzas, which were printed in the Bath Chronicle, with a little paragraph by the editor, that they were from the pen of "a charming lady of title."
A copy of the paper, delivered in the Close at Wells, went the round of the little community, and, fluttered with delight, Miss Falconer told admiring friends that dear Charlotte's husband was a man of cultivated taste and encouraged her muse.
The days of dearth and barrenness will come, must come, to those who sow their seed upon the stony ground. The bright sky must cloud over, the winds and waves roar and swell, and the house that is builded on the sand must fall, and great shall be the ruin of it. Secure in the present calm, poor little frail barks skim the surface and are content. Thus we leave Charlotte, and will not look at her again, lest we see that saddest of all sad sights, the falling of the prop on which she leaned in her blindness and foolishness, the breaking of the staff which shall surely pierce her hand with a wound which no earthly power can avail to heal.
PART III.
CONCLUSION.
"As a fond mother, when the day is o'er,
Leads, by the hand, her little child to bed,
Half willing, half reluctant, to be led,
And leave his broken playthings on the floor,
Still gazing at them through the open door;
Nor wholly reassured and comforted
By promises of others in their stead,
Which, though more splendid, may not please him more;
So Nature deals with us, and takes away
Our playthings one by one, and, by the hand,
Leads us to rest so gently, that we go
Scarce knowing if we wished to go or stay,
Being too full of sleep to understand
How far the unknown transcends the 'what we know.'"
"For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known."—1 Cor. xiii. 12.