CHAPTER XCVII.

MR. BACON'S PARSONAGE. CHRISTIAN RESIGNATION. TIME AND CHANGE. WILKIE AND THE MONK IN THE ESCURIAL.

The idea of her life shall sweetly creep
Into his study of imagination;
And every lovely organ of her life
Shall come apparell'd in more precious habit,
More moving delicate, and full of life,
Into the eye and prospect of his soul,
Than when she lived indeed.
                                                   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 learnt 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 every thing 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. 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 of 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: ὅν ὅι θεοι φιλοῦσιν ἀποθνησκε νεός. 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 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 acquitted 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.

Ah! male FORTUNÆ devota est ara MANENTI!
        Fallit, et hæc nullas accipit ara preces. 1

1 WALLIUS.

All things here are subject to Time and Mutability:

Quod tibi largâ dedit Hora dextrâ,
Hora furaci rapiet sinistrâ. 2

2 CASIMIR.

We must be in Eternity before we can be secure against change. “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.

Miser, chi speme in cosa mortal pone;
Ma, chi non ve la pone? 3

3 PETRARCH.

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 sate daily in sight of that picture for now nearly three-score years; during that time my companions have dropt 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!”

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

“The shows of things are better than themselves,”

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:—

Ὁρῶ γὰρ ἡμᾶς οὐδὲν ὄντας ἄλλο, πλἡν
Ἔιδωλ᾽, ὅσοιπερ ζῶμεν, ἤ κούφην σκιάν.4

4 SOPHOCLES.

These are reflections which should make us think

    Of that same time when no more change shall be,
    But stedfast rest of all things, firmly stayd
    Upon the pillars of Eternity,
    That is contraire to mutability;
    For all that moveth doth in change delight:
    But thenceforth all shall rest eternally
    With Him that is the God of Sabaoth hight,
O that great Sabaoth God grant me that sabbath's sight!5

5 SPENCER.