stigmatized his family.  But the sentimental mind conceived it as ‘monstrous impiety’ to bring this accusation against a parent who did not break windows, or grin to deformity.  He behaved toward him as to a reasonable person, and felt the rebellious rancour instead of the pity.  Thus sentiment came in the way of pity.  By degrees, Sir Purcell transferred all his father’s madness to the Fates by whom he was persecuted.  There was evidently madness somewhere, as his shuddering human nature told him.  It did not offend his sentiment to charge this upon the order of the universe.

Against such a wild-hitting madness, or concentrated ire of the superior Powers, Sir Purcell stood up, taking blow upon blow.  As organist of Hillford Church, he brushed his garments, and put a polish on his apparel, with an energetic humility that looked like unconquerable patience; as though he had said:  “While life is left in me, I will be seen for what I am.”  We will vary it—­“For what I think myself.”  In reality, he fought no battle.  He had been dead-beaten from his boyhood.  Like the old Spanish Governor, the walls of whose fortress had been thrown down by an earthquake, and who painted streets to deceive the enemy, he was rendered safe enough by his astuteness, except against a traitor from within.

One who goes on doggedly enduring, doggedly doing his best, must subsist on comfort of a kind that is likely to be black comfort.  The mere piping of the musical devil shall not suffice.  In Sir Purcell’s case, it had long seemed a magnanimity to him that he should hold to a life so vindictively scourged, and his comfort was that he had it at his own disposal.  To know so much, to suffer, and still to refrain, flattered his pride.  “The term of my misery is in my hand,” he said, softened by the reflection.  It is our lowest philosophy.

But, when the heart of a man so fashioned is stirred to love a woman, it has a new vital force, new health, and cannot play these solemn pranks.  The flesh, and all its fatality, claims him.  When Sir Purcell became acquainted with Cornelia, he found the very woman his heart desired, or certainly a most admirable picture of her.  It was, perhaps, still more to the lady’s credit, if she was only striving to be what he was learning to worship.  The beneficial change wrought in him, made him enamoured of healthy thinking and doing.  Had this, as a result of sharp mental overhauling, sprung from himself, there would have been hope for him.  Unhappily, it was dependent on her who inspired it.  He resolved that life should be put on a fresh trial in her person; and expecting that naturally to fail, of which he had always entertained a base conception, he was perforce brought to endow her with unexampled virtues, in order to keep any degree of confidence tolerably steadfast in his mind.  The lady accepted the decorations thus bestowed on her, with much grace and willingness.  She consented, little aware of her heroism, to shine forth as an