BOOK II. THE SECRET OF A LIFE. Leon! Oh, thus she stood; Even with such life and majesty (warm life, To me comes a creature Sometimes her head on one side, sometimes another, So fill'd and so becoming-in pure white robes, Book Second. THE SECRET OF A LIFE. CHAPTER I. EARLY DAYS. UPON the last few sentences of the introductory book hangs. the whole web of tried and redeemed life which we propose to display. The whole interest really centres on that feeble and stricken man. Human love, intensified by long years of agonizing fear, was watching, angel like, every tottering step in that man's career. From that deep love, that yearning anxiety to save an only child, had sprung the heroism which for more than twenty years had sustained the founder of that day's feast,-the friend of many homes, the counsellor and restorer of many wanderers from the peaceful path of virtue. The wounded love of that good man's heart had strung him to a life of active and sublime, benevolence, instead of weaning him away to the verge of despair. All these glorious fruits-of which we have gathered a fair cluster already, but the full vintage of which we shall witness only in heaven-had been yielded from the soil of a smitten heart, on which the fertilizing dews of a heavenly faith and love had constantly descended. It was not generally known in the town of Arlton what manner of life Mr. Barton had led previous to his settlement in that neighbourhood; for though he had been a resident more than twenty years, his life had been so really retired, and yet so identified with public movements of a benevolent kind, that few opportunities had arisen for the gratification of curiosity in the matter of his past life. Surmise indeed had not been idle, and had by degrees taken the form of authentic report. The secret which people judged him anxious to veil, had, as was thought, oozed out; but his noble and untiring goodness had so won upon all hearts, that the discovered secret was tenderly dealt with, and all his neighbours and townsmen felt that it was a point of honour to seem as if they knew nothing, all the while sympathizing sincerely with their benefactor and friend. He was born at his ancestral residence, Mylden Place, in a distant county, of an old family. Fortune, substantially unimpaired, awaited his very entrance into life; for his father fell, as became a soldier of an illustrious land, in the last American war, when the heir was unborn. His fresh life was tended by luxury and love; it seldom waned even for a day, and he grew up to the age of youth with all the advantages of personal beauty, frankness of disposition, quickness of discernment, and wellregulated desires for learning and for power. School days had been to him one brief undistinguishable holiday-for in sport and in tasks he was equally at ease. Passing in due course to the University, he was readily welcomed to all that is so fascinating in the more refined society of the colleges of Oxford. But a change was at hand for which his young heart was ill prepared. The mother who had led him hitherto with a firm hand, the mother who had been to him through life, thus far, an angel of all good and all wisdom, was suddenly smitten with a prevailing fever, and before the first "long," which he had already mapped out for so much pleasure to be shared with her, he was summoned to close her eyes in death; but when he came, their light was gone, and another hand than his had sealed them from his gaze for ever. To one who had in fact never come in contact with any form of affliction sufficient to leave its impression behind, this great blow of death was fearful. It had never entered into his most grave thoughts that he might be so cruelly bereft of all on which his love hung fondly and hopingly, and Like all he was bowed to the ground with a voiceless woe. young spirits, he fancied that he had no longer any wish to live-hardly any right. He was made of sterner stuff than mere sickly sentiment; but he had so placed his all upon that rich venture of a mother's love, that when he saw the wreck of death, he felt that he was poor indeed. Nor was the first affecting impulse of that kind that spends its strength in passionate tears, and then exhales like the morning mist; it dwelt long upon his nature, and left that nature softened to receive new and holy impressions. Such impressions fell upon him from the gentle wisdom which "time ripens on the lips of age." The aged servant of the temple in which his fathers had gone up to pray, for centuries, was ever in meek and unobtrusive zeal, at his side, to chide the exasperation of grief, if needful, but more often and more heartily to soothe the sore thoughts of irreparable loss by pouring the oil of joy, from the horn of the Heavenly Comforter, and diverting the vain and wasted sympathies of the youth's noble mind to aims of usefulness and an endless glory. So that, when he returned at length to resume his study and his friendly intercourse with many like-minded, he recognized those severe sanctions which bind men to diligence when mere taste and inclination might prove too weak to resist the countless temptations which beset the child of fortune in the grove as well as in the forum and the highways of life. He gave himself to the work of God, and happily for him, it needed no violent change in his outward demeanour ; for his native refinement and cultivated taste had ever shrunk from excess and folly, and led him to association with those whose exemplary conduct charmed him and hedged him round with safety. His collegiate course was indeed successful above the average attained by young men in similar circumstances; but he made no pretensions and no special effort to distinguish himself as a profound scholar in any department. He drew, with delight, from the wells which the giants of old had hewn out for the refreshment of all time, and his innate passion for all forms of truth was enamoured of the precision and reliableness of the 'science of sciences'; but he dreaded lest his finer feelings should be H |