r
whether the world which rolls on beside or over them be the world of a
solar system, or of a conquering empire, or of a small-souled village.

It now and then seemed strange to Hope, his wife and sister--now and
then, and for a passing moment--that while their hearts were full of
motion and their hands occupied with the vicissitudes of their lot, the
little world around them, which was wont to busy itself so strenuously
with their affairs, should work its yearly round as if it heeded them
not. As often as they detected themselves in this thought, they smiled
at it; for might not each neighbour say the same of them as constituting
a part of the surrounding world? there a cottage where some engrossing
interest did not defy sympathy; where there was not some secret joy,
some heart-sore, hidden from every eye; some important change, while all
looked as familiar as the thatch and paling, and the faces which
appeared within them? Yet there seemed something wonderful in the
regularity with which affairs proceeded. The hawthorn hedges blossomed,
and the corn was green in the furrows: the saw of the carpenter was
heard from day to day, and the anvil of the blacksmith rang. The
letter-carrier blew his horn as the times came round; the children
shouted in the road; and their parents bought and sold, planted and
delved, ate and slept, as they had ever done, and as if existence were
as mechanical as the clock which told the hours without fail from the
grey steeple. Amidst all this, how great were the changes in the
corner-house!

In the early spring, the hearts of the dwellers in that house had been,
though far less dreary than in the winter, still heavy at times with
care. Hester thought that she should never again look upon the palm
boughs of the willow, swelling with sap, and full of the hum of the
early bees, or upon the bright green sprouts of the gooseberry in the
cottage gardens, or upon the earliest primrose of the season on its
moist bank, without a vivid recollection of the anxieties of this first
spring season of her married life. The balmy month of May, rich in its
tulips, and lilacs, and guelder roses, was sacred to Margaret, from the
sorrow which it brought in the death of Mrs Enderby. She wandered
under the hedgerows with Philip, during the short remainder of his stay,
and alone when he was gone; and grew into better acquaintance with her
own state of heart and mind, and into higher hope for the future of a