se of Bishop
Grantly,--who, by his showing, was surely one of the best of
churchmen who ever walked through this vale of sorrow,--were as
eloquent in dispraise of the existing prelate as could ever have been
any more clearly-pointed phrases. This daily visit to the cathedral,
where he would say his prayers as he had said them for so many years,
and listen to the organ, of which he knew all the power and every
blemish as though he himself had made the stops and fixed the pipes,
was the chief occupation of his life. It was a pity that it could not
have been made to cover a larger portion of the day.

It was sometimes sad enough to watch him as he sat alone. He would
have a book near him, and for a while would keep it in his hands. It
would generally be some volume of good old standard theology with
which he had been, or supposed himself to have been, conversant from
his youth. But the book would soon be laid aside, and gradually he
would move himself away from it, and he would stand about in the
room, looking now out of a window from which he would fancy that he
could not be seen, or gazing up at some print which he had known for
years; and then he would sit down for a while in one chair, and for
a while in another, while his mind was wandering back into old days,
thinking of old troubles and remembering his old joys. And he had a
habit, when he was sure that he that he was not watched, of creeping
up to a great black wooden case, which always stood in one corner of
the sitting-room which he occupied in the deanery. Mr. Harding, when
he was younger, had been a performer on the violoncello, and in this
case there was still the instrument from which he had been wont to
extract the sounds which he had so dearly loved. Now in these latter
days he never made any attempt to play. Soon after he had come to
the deanery there had fallen upon him an illness, and after that he
had never again asked for his bow. They who were around him,--his
daughter chiefly and her husband,--had given the matter much thought,
arguing with themselves whether or no it would be better to invite
him to resume the task he so loved; for of all the works of his life
this playing on the violoncello had been the sweetest to him; but
even before that illness his hand had greatly failed him, and the
dean and Mrs. Arabin had agreed that it would be better to let the
matter pass without a word. He had never asked to be allowed to play.
He had expressed no regr