The thought of them, when it comes across us in middle life, brings with it only a transient sadness, like the shadow of a passing cloud. We turn our eyes from them while they are in prospect, but when they are in retrospect many a longing lingering look is cast behind. So long as Mr. Allison was in business he looked to Thaxted Grange as the place where he hoped one day to enjoy the blessings of retirement,—that otium cum dignitate, which in a certain sense the prudent citizen is more likely to attain than the successful statesman. It was the pleasure of recollection that gave this hope its zest and its strength. But after the object which during so many years he had held in view, had been obtained, his day-dreams, if he had allowed them to take their course, would have recurred more frequently to Bishopsgate Street than they had ever wandered from thence to the scenes of his boyhood. They recurred thither oftener than he wished, although few men have been more masters of themselves; and then the remembrance of his wife, whom he had lost by a lingering disease in middle age; and of the children, those who had died during their childhood, and those who in reality were almost as much lost to him in the ways of the world, made him alway turn for comfort to the prospect of that better state of existence in which they should once more all be gathered together, and where there would be neither change nor parting. His thoughts often fell into this train, when on summer evenings he was taking a solitary pipe in his arbour, with the church in sight, and the church yard wherein at no distant time he was to be laid in his last abode. Such musings induced a sense of sober piety,—of thankfulness for former blessings, contentment with the present, and humble yet sure and certain hope for futurity, which might vainly have been sought at prayer meetings, or evening lectures, where indeed little good can ever be obtained without some deleterious admixture, or alloy of baser feelings.
1 ISAAC COMMENUS.
The happiness which he had found in retirement was of a different kind from what he had contemplated: for the shades of evening were gathering when he reached the place of his long-wished-for rest, and the picture of it which had imprinted itself on his imagination was a morning view. But he had been prepared for this by that slow change of which we are not aware during its progress till we see it reflected in others, and are thus made conscious of it in ourselves; and he found a satisfaction in the station which he occupied there, too worthy in its nature to be called pride, and which had not entered into his anticipations. It is said to have been a saying of George the Third, that the happiest condition in which an Englishman could be placed, was just below that wherein it would have been necessary for him to act as a Justice of the Peace, and above that which would have rendered him liable to parochial duties. This was just Mr. Allison's position: there was nothing which brought him into rivalry or competition with the surrounding Squirarchy, and the yeomen and peasantry respected him for his own character, as well as for his name's-sake. He gave employment to more persons than when he was engaged in trade, and his indirect influence over them was greater; that of his sister was still more. The elders of the village remembered her in her youth, and loved her for what she then had been as well as for what she now was; the young looked up to her as the Lady Bountiful, to whom no one that needed advice or assistance ever applied in vain. She it was who provided those much approved plum-cakes, not the less savoury for being both homely and wholesome, the thought of which induced the children to look on to their Lent examination with hope, and prepare for it with alacrity. Those offices in a parish which are the province of the Clergyman's wife, when he has made choice of one who knows her duty and has both will and ability to discharge it, Miss Allison performed; and she rendered Mr. Bacon the farther, and to him individually the greater service of imparting to his daughter those instructions which she had no mother to impart. Deborah could not have had a better teacher; but as the present chapter has extended to a sufficient length,
Diremo il resto in quel che vien dipoi,
Per non venire a noja a me e voi.2
2 ORLANDO INNAMORATO.
CHAPTER CIII.
A FEW PARTICULARS CONCERNING NO. 113 BISHOPSGATE STREET WITHIN; AND OF THE FAMILY AT THAXTED GRANGE.
Opinion is the rate of things,
From hence our peace doth flow;
I have a better fate than kings,
Because I think it so.
KATHERINE PHILIPS.