Book Fifth.

THE CURSE WORKING.

CHAPTER I.

PARTIAL REVIVAL.

THE contents of the last book may be regarded as an unjustifiable interruption if the reader pleases; and in that case he will have an opportunity of estimating the extent to which one may carry parenthesis run mad. But it would be a safer conclusion to regard every word therein written as bearing, more or less, on the theme which suggested the retrospect, viz., Mr. Barton's state of mind at the time when the astute Mr. Drake was deliberately slicing, in something very like halves, the income and the property of the father for the benefit of the son-or, to speak more accurately, for the aggrandizement of the new daughter-in-law. It was our business to account for the comparative and most rare indifference of the elder party in the case, and we trust that, to many readers, the account presented is quite adequate; for surely there are not a few of them who have passed the low down stage of moral culture, in which the love of money is ever the most conspicuous and operative motive of human conduct. In the mind of Mr. Barton, the passion of doing good had driven out the passion of getting gain or hoarding wealth; while the kind of good he sought to do, as well as the sanctity of the source from which that new best passion sprang, contributed a chastened tone to the nuptial gladness of the hour. We now resume the narrative of Sarah's wedding; not that we may display great lore, and taste, and pathos in the millinery and sentimental line, but merely to show how bright

and rosy may be the morning of a day, which yet shall go down in storm.

We were nearly saying that the business had at length passed from the lawyer's to the bridesmaids' hands; but, standing rebuked, we remember that Mr. Drake did not suffer any, the least part, of the whole series of businesses to be snatched out of his hand until all was over, dinner included, and the gay postilions brandished their whips in his face, and whisked his incumbrance away. Charles would fain have launched out a little more stylishly, but he respected the delicate taste of his bride. Charles suffered his mind to be filled for days with the red brick picture of St. James's church; but Sarah leaned to St. Mary, Woolnoths; and Nathaniel compounded the force of these preferences into a diagonal invasion of St. Andrew's, Holborn, where he was wont to sit, and stand, and kneel, and chop responses inaudibly on Sundays and on Christmas-days. Charles would have twelve bridesmaids; but Nathaniel's remonstrance rose like ocean's billows. "Twelve! he would not have twelve women in his house at one time-no, not for all he was worth in the world: besides, he could not if he would. Where could he put them? If they came to church, they might stay there, and spend the day as they ought, in sobriety and SILENCE: he wouldn't have them turning his house into Bedlam. He proposed two-it did not matter who; perhaps it would be cheaper to have two, like mutes, and then they need not stay all day. Give them a glass of wine, and a couple of shillings each, and a piece of cake, and very good pay too." But though Mr. Drake ruled as far as number went, Sarah was despotic-nothing could turn her; and no wonder, if all was true that we have heard. She had given her solemn word and honour, long before she had ever seen Charles, that the two Miss Henbanes in the Strand should be her angels, if ever she should want any angels for a bridal occasion. And so Carlotta and

Mariana Henbane were the foregone conclusions against which Buccaneer, Bridegroom, and the dismal Mottram railed in vain. The Buccaneer knew the set well, and he hated according to knowledge. Charles had such a spite against the elder, for what he called her green-eyed malice, that he had more than

once caught crabs with his oar, just for the pleasure of splashing her all over; and Mr. Mottram had conceived a wellfounded horror of Miss Marian, from the fact that he had seen her more than once in the park reading a Testament. But, in truth, that Testament was a greater comfort to her than Mr. Mottram could guess; for she needed some help other than earth seemed likely to yield. She was deformed and very ugly, and, what was sadder still, she had very hard work to be even decent in her temper, though, it must be confessed, she had put down the valve this day with a new patent screw, and let off no more than one little splenetical whistle, one little cantankerous paradox-"That she wasn't sure, not quite positive, but she did think it wasn't heavenly-minded to get married." Good Mr. Nathaniel yielded in this one respect as graciously as any man could be expected to do, who had everything else his own way; and he seemed to be perfectly satisfied that the grave young spinsters should be permitted as a background to the lively hilarity of the time, just as his old friend and troublesome patron, the Dowager Countess of Thorpe, always wore black Genoa velvet and dirty lace, to set off with vigour the glow of the family brilliants. He did not regard his own exercise of authority as that of a mere tyrant, self-willed and solely self-considering; but as that of a paternal monarch who knew and decreed exactly what would be the best for those who could not be expected at such a time to know either their own interests or their own minds; so that when the train returned from St. Andrew's to his own house, he greedily sought even from the bilious-looking, teeth-chattering Henbane girls that meed of praise which he felt to be his due.

"Couldn't have been better, now; all went off first-rate, didn't it, my dears? And I declare I thought it uncommonly good taste, and a mark of very proper respect in old Briscoe, to have his curate for a clerk; and the two together, you see, were quite as good as a bishop, or at least a dean."

"He appeared to be much moved with the awful responsibility of his position; and I'm not surprised he should have hesitated before taking such an awful and eternal step," murmured Miss Mariana, just in good time to drive Mr.

Drake back into his shell of prejudice, whence he had emerged thoughtlessly into the deep waters of debate. It was just in time to prevent him from building up his vanity any higher on the false foundation of Miss Henbane's anticipated sympathy and praise.

It is perhaps more usual for the mind to be led by sorrow to the contemplation of things unseen; but it is not less natural that happiness should suggest by association as strongly as grief by contrast, the blessedness that endureth for ever. The Prince de Ligne has said with equal beauty and truth, "that happiness always fills a good heart with religious feelings," and we have only to add to this statement, that there will be found in every case a correspondence between the kind of religious feelings produced, and the nature of the happiness producing. In the case of our Sarah, there was a happiness that, after all, was more akin to heaven than earth. Her union with Charles was not so much the gratification of a wish or a relief to an impetuous passion, as the fulfilment of a prayer that she might be nearer to his soul, and that she might assist the immortal nature in its strife with sin and mortal ills. God had given him to be her teacher and guardian for earth, and her pupil for the world to come. Not for a moment did she dream of intruding her peculiar opinions, or even her deepest religious experience, upon the stage of daily business; as if it were the sole object of her life to make him a second self, a true and polished mirror of her real or fancied piety. No, her belief was that in his noble character the element of Divine love would work far more mightily and gloriously than ever it had done in herself; but she was glad because the Lord had made her the vestal watcher of a flame that might not be allowed to die. Her heart then was crowded with religious feelings of the best kind. Religion was the source of her rejoicing and religious were the feelings that rushed with each blood-tide through her heart.

Charles, too, was happy. To look on, he was even more joyous than his bride; not wild and frivolous, but full even to weeping of his great joy. His happiness was more earthly in its texture, it arose from the fact that earth bloomed like Paradise for him; not that the gate of heaven was thrown

open-that his span of mortal life was assured now of all bliss that man could wish or gain. His narrow range of thought was quite filled up with the one-half, the less part of the great gift of God that day. Like one who has but counted half his unexpected and most welcome treasure, he closed the casket all too soon, and lifted up to heaven half-hearted praise. He was filled with religious feelings, for a thankful tribute to the God of providential bounties is religious in its kind; it is not of the religion that is sought and found; it is obedience to a human feeling, not to a Divine law; it is, comparatively speaking, the gratitude of a pauper who knows not and cares not for the parchment which makes him a free man and a prince, but gives out all his heart in thanks for the pittance of a shilling.

There are many who would admit that happiness does produce religious feelings; and yet they would object that it does so as the river does the sea-itself is engulfed. This, however, is not true in the case of spurious religious sentiment; it is by the very nature of the case false in the instance of genuine piety. There was nothing surely in Mr. Charles's fervent gratitude to God, to repel the love of his bride, or to stifle his love for her. There was no incompatibility between that joyous love which knows no language, and that ardent praise which attempts no song. Still less was to be apprehended in the case of Sarah, from the permanence and power of religious feelings; for to take the lowest view we can, every one to his taste, and we say that with her, religion and pleasure were not only commensurable, but they were almost identical terms. To say that religion is fatal to pleasure, is as absurd as to say that the pursuit and possession of wealth to an avaricious man is positive pain. Religion cannot be engaged in at all except by a heart that cares very little comparatively for anything besides. You may truly say that it is not to your taste, just as Charles's groomsman, a terribly poetical man from Oxford, could not, for the life of him, see anything in Sarah; wondered, in wild conspiracy with Mottram, what in the name of all the powers Charles could see in a spiritless pale-faced school girl like that; and had predicted oracularly, Mottram doing the echo part, that Charles