like the Western sun whose habit it is, when he is fairly treated, to break out in quiet splendours, which by no means exhaust his treasury.  Blessed indeed above his fellows, by the height of the bow-winged bird in a fair weather sunset sky above the pecking sparrow, is he that ever in the recurrent evening of his day sees the best of it ahead and soon to come.  He has the rich reward of a youth and manhood of virtuous living.  Dr. Middleton misdoubted the future as well as the past of the man who did not, in becoming gravity, exult to dine.  That man he deemed unfit for this world and the next.

An example of the good fruit of temperance, he had a comfortable pride in his digestion, and his political sentiments were attuned by his veneration of the Powers rewarding virtue.  We must have a stable world where this is to be done.

The Rev. Doctor was a fine old picture; a specimen of art peculiarly English; combining in himself piety and epicurism, learning and gentlemanliness, with good room for each and a seat at one another’s table:  for the rest, a strong man, an athlete in his youth, a keen reader of facts and no reader of persons, genial, a giant at a task, a steady worker besides, but easily discomposed.  He loved his daughter and he feared her.  However much he liked her character, the dread of her sex and age was constantly present to warn him that he was not tied to perfect sanity while the damsel Clara remained unmarried.  Her mother had been an amiable woman, of the poetical temperament nevertheless, too enthusiastic, imaginative, impulsive, for the repose of a sober scholar; an admirable woman, still, as you see, a woman, a fire-work.  The girl resembled her.  Why should she wish to run away from Patterne Hall for a single hour?  Simply because she was of the sex born mutable and explosive.  A husband was her proper custodian, justly relieving a father.  With demagogues abroad and daughters at home, philosophy is needed for us to keep erect.  Let the girl be Cicero’s Tullia:  well, she dies!  The choicest of them will furnish us examples of a strange perversity.

Miss Dale was beside Dr. Middleton.  Clara came to them and took the other side.

“I was telling Miss Dale that the signal for your subjection is my enfranchisement,” he said to her, sighing and smiling.  “We know the date.  The date of an event to come certifies to it as a fact to be counted on.”

“Are you anxious to lose me?” Clara faltered.

“My dear, you have planted me on a field where I am to expect the trumpet, and when it blows I shall be quit of my nerves, no more.”

Clara found nothing to seize on for a reply in these words.  She thought upon the silence of Laetitia.

Sir Willoughby advanced, appearing in a cordial mood.

“I need not ask you whether you are better,” he said to Clara, sparkled to Laetitia, and raised a key to the level of Dr. Middleton’s breast, remarking, “I am going down to my inner cellar.”