University of Virginia Library

8. CHAPTER VIII.

Shakespeare.

In a Scotch village the Manse is sometimes the only good
house, and generally it is the best; almost, indeed, what in
old times the Mansion used to be in an English one. In Mr.
Bacon's parish, the vicarage, though humble as the benefice
itself, was the neatest. The cottage in which he and Margaret
passed their childhood, had been remarkable for that comfort
which is the result and the reward of order and neatness:
and when the reunion which blessed them both rendered the
remembrance of those years delightful, they returned in
this respect to the way in which they had been trained up,
practised the economy which they had learned there, and
loved to think how entirely their course of life, in all its circumstances,
would be after the heart of that person, if she
could behold it, whose memory they both with equal affection
cherished. After his bereavement, it was one of the
widower's pensive pleasures to keep everything in the same

state as when Margaret was living. Nothing was neglected
that she used to do, or that she would have done. The
flowers were tended as carefully as if she were still to enjoy
their fragrance and their beauty; and the birds who came
in winter for their crumbs, were fed as duly for her sake, as
they had formerly been by her hands.

There was no superstition in this, nor weakness. Immoderate
grief, if it does not exhaust itself by indulgence,
easily assumes the one character or the other, or takes a
type of insanity. But he had looked for consolation, where,
when sincerely sought, it is always to be found; and he had
experienced that religion effects in a true believer all that
philosophy professes, and more than all that mere philosophy
can perform. The wounds which stoicism would cauterize,
religion heals.

There is a resignation with which, it may be feared,
most of us deceive ourselves. To bear what must be
borne, and submit to what cannot be resisted, is no more
than what the unregenerate heart is taught by the instinct
of animal nature. But to acquiesce in the afflictive dispensations
of Providence, — to make one's own will conform in
all things to that of our Heavenly Father, — to say to him
in the sincerity of faith, when we drink of the bitter cup,
“Thy will be done!” — to bless the name of the Lord as
much from the heart when he takes away as when he gives,
and with a depth of feeling, of which, perhaps, none but the
afflicted heart is capable, — this is the resignation which religion
teaches, this the sacrifice which it requires.[8] This
sacrifice Leonard had made, and he felt that it was accepted.

Severe, therefore, as his loss had been, and lasting as its
effects were, it produced in him nothing like a settled sorrow,
nor even that melancholy which sorrow leaves behind.
Gibbon has said to himself, that as a mere philosopher he
could not agree with the Greeks, in thinking that those who
die in their youth are favored by the Gods:

It was because he was “a mere philosopher,” that he
failed to perceive a truth which the religious heathen acknowledged,
and which is so trivial, and of such practical
value, that it may now be seen inscribed upon village tombstones.
The Christian knows that “Blessed are the dead
which die in the Lord; even so saith the Spirit.” And the
heart of the Christian mourner, in its deepest distress, hath
the witness of the Spirit to that consolatory assurance.

In this faith Leonard regarded his bereavement. His
loss, he knew, had been Margaret's gain. What, if she had
been summoned in the flower of her years, and from a state
of connubial happiness which there had been nothing to disturb
or to alloy? How soon might that flower have been
blighted, — how surely must it have faded, — how easily
might that happiness have been interrupted, by some of
those evils which flesh is heir to! And as the separation
was to take place, how mercifully had it been appointed
that he, who was the stronger vessel, should be the survivor!
Even for their child this was the best, greatly as she needed,
and would need, a mother's care. His paternal solicitude
would supply that care, as far as it was possible to supply
it; but had he been removed, mother and child must have
been left to the mercy of Providence, without any earthly
protector, or any means of support.

For her to die was gain; in him, therefore, it were sinful
as well as selfish to repine, and of such selfishness and sin
his heart acouitted him. If a wish could have recalled her

to life, no such wish would ever have by him been uttered,
nor ever have by him been felt; certain he was, that he
loved her too well to bring her again into this world of instability
and trial. Upon earth there can be no safe happiness.

All things here are subject to Time and Mutability:

We must be in eternity before we can be secure against
cnange. “The world,” says Cowper, “upon which we close
our eyes at night, is never the same with that on which we
open them in the morning.”

It was to the perfect Order he should find in that state
upon which he was about to enter, that the judicious Hooker
looked forward at his death with placid and profound contentment.
Because he had been employed in contending
against a spirit of insubordination and schism which soon
proved fatal to his country; and because his life had been
passed under the perpetual discomfort of domestic discord,
the happiness of Heaven seemed, in his estimation, to consist
primarily in Order, as, indeed, in all human societies this is
the first thing needful. The discipline which Mr. Bacon had
undergone was very different in kind: what he delighted to
think was, that the souls of those whom death and redemption
have made perfect, are in a world where there is no
change, nor parting, — where nothing fades, nothing passes
away and is no more seen, but the good and the beautiful
are permanent.

When Wilkie was in the Escurial looking at Titian's
famous picture of the Last Supper, in the refectory there,
an old Jeronimite said to him, “I have sat daily in sight of
that picture for now nearly threescore years; during that
time my companions have dropped off, one after another, —
all who were my seniors, all who were my contemporaries,
and many, or most of those who were younger than myself;
more than one generation has passed away, and there the
figures in the picture have remained unchanged! I look at
them till I sometimes think that they are the realities, and
we but shadows!”[12]

I wish I could record the name of the monk by whom
that natural feeling was so feelingly and strikingly expressed.

says the author of the Tragedy of Nero, whose name also
I could wish had been forthcoming; and the classical reader
will remember the lines of Sophocles: —

These are reflections which should make us think