have most desired the light of the sun. His words I did use to gather for my food, and for antidotes against my faintings. He has held me, and has kept me from mine iniquities. Yea, my steps have been strengthened in His way. "Now, while he was thus in discourse, his countenance changed; his strong man bowed under him; and after he had said, 'Take me, for I come unto Thee,' he ceased to be seen of men." CHAPTER XI. OUR VILLAGERS. And when Thou mak'st Thy jewels up, May we, we little band of love, We sinners, saved by grace, WOULD you like to know a few more of our people, those who are spared with us, and to us? First of all you must look at that tight little house, with snow-white blinds, (it is really too genteel-looking to be called a cottage, although they have named it "Myrtle Cottage.") That belongs to a master mason, and altogether it stands so exclusive and bolt upright in its prim little garden, bordered with slates and garnished with yellow clumps of Lent lilies, that it quite frightened me, and it was a long time before I ventured to seek acquaintance within. I should have lost something if I had not though, for I found there such a meek, patient invalid; she scarcely ever knows what it is to have a day's health, but she has learned that "lesson of sweet peace," "Rather in all to be resigned than blest." And she is so quietly diligent, that her house is the very model of the village. Enter the small kitchen when you will, there is neither speck nor spot to be seen upon the scoured floor, and the brass candlesticks and tin saucepans might be real gold and silver for brightness. And there is pussy too, such a beauty, in her smooth coat of striped satin, purring from her own most original dwellinghouse, a tea-chest turned upside down beside a fire so temptingly red, it always makes me long to poke it. The summer parlour is better still; it is carpeted and papered: the paper represents a robin redbreast, a rosebud, and a butterfly, following each other in a perpetual succession; a sort of abortive attempt at what drapers call "a running pattern." And there is the family Bible, bound in antiquated sheepskin, and printed on yellowish paper, like parchment, containing the mason's genealogical tree, and this caution into the bargain, "Steal not this book for fear of shame; For here you read the owner's name." Over the fire-place are what, in courtesy, we are bound to call portraits, of the master and his "missus:" he is dressed in a blue coat with gold buttons as big as coins; and she wears a scarlet gown and a prodigious cap, trimmed with seagreen ribbons. Below them are some "broken tea-cups wisely kept for show," which, we may add by way of jingle, do most decidedly "glitter in a row." On the opposite wall are pictures which would delight Mr. Ruskin; so purely pre-Raffaelite. Pharaoh's daughter, a strong-minded woman, in an ermine victorine and pearl necklace, frantically pulling little Moses out of a modern cradle; companion piece being a yellow prodigal returning to a green father, who is killing a purple calf. But the chef-d'œuvre is a specimen sampler, framed and glazed, containing a bunch of green silk which we are told is the tree of knowledge of good and evil; it is loaded with enormous, unwholesomelooking apples, at which, from opposite sides, Adam and Eve are gazing quite desperately, each of them carrying a spade and a hay-rake. the Certainly, the poor will have religious pictures; so, putting on one side all conceited ideas of pure spiritualism, our best plan seems to be to assist them in obtaining good ones: such as will suggest to them worthy conceptions of the most worthy subjects. Two doors lower down there is a nice old woman who quite appropriates the first part of Coleridge's definition of her class, which he asserts is divided into three parts; first, you dear old soul; second, you old woman; third, you old witch. Not that she is in the least picturesque looking. No silvergrey hairs for a crown of glory, for she actually wears a frizzled toupée, and a black cap upon that; moreover, she has cheeks of cherry-red, and little ferrety eyes peeping through spectacles. But she sits alone in her fusty, dusty room, so busy and so bright. Always working, never fretting; I believe that, "of the dew of heaven" she lives. I have often wondered how it is that the poor, even those of them who are not remarkable for religious convictions, are wont to bow beneath the will of God with a much readier and more enduring patience than we do, who call ourselves more enlightened” than they. "It is the will of God" -"God's will be done," are expressions which issue from their lips with more reality than they do from ours. Lately I have come to think that it is because they retain the childlike conception of God as a Person in whom they can trust; because He is known to them through the intelligible medium of human sympathies and suffering; whilst we, in what we consider our sublimer knowledge, are accustomed to think of Him as a Power, till, in the cant of our wise foolishness, He becomes to us no more than one of His own 66 |