ice and rose-cheek of the child make not that loss which the hearth
misses the most. From childhood to manhood, and from manhood to
departure, the natural changes are gradual and prepared. The absence
most missed is that household life which presided, which kept things in
order, and must be coaxed if a chair were displaced. That providence
in trifles, that clasp of small links, that dear, bustling agency,--now
pleased, now complaining,--dear alike in each change of its humour;
that active life which has no self of its own; like the mind of a poet,
though its prose be the humblest, transferring self into others, with
its right to be cross, and its charter to scold; for the motive is
clear,--it takes what it loves too anxiously to heart. The door of the
parlour is open, the garden-path still passes before the threshold; but
no step now has full right to halt at the door and interrupt the grave
thought on Greek texts; no small talk on details and wise sayings
chimes in with the wrath of "Medea." The Prudent Genius is gone from the
household; and perhaps as the good scholar now wearily pauses, and looks
out on the silent garden, he would have given with joy all that Athens
produced, from Aeschylus to Plato, to hear again from the old familiar
lips the lament on torn jackets, or the statistical economy of eggs.

But see, though the wife is no more, though the children have departed,
the vicar's home is not utterly desolate. See, along the same walk on
which William soothed Susan's fears and won her consent,--see, what
fairy advances? Is it Susan returned to youth? How like! Yet look again,
and how unlike! The same, the pure, candid regard; the same, the clear,
limpid blue of the eye; the same, that fair hue of the hair,--light,
but not auburn; more subdued, more harmonious than that equivocal colour
which too nearly approaches to red. But how much more blooming and
joyous than Susan's is that exquisite face in which all Hebe smiles
forth; how much airier the tread, light with health; how much rounder,
if slighter still, the wave of that undulating form! She smiles, her
lips move, she is conversing with herself; she cannot be all silent,
even when alone, for the sunny gladness of her nature must have vent
like a bird's. But do not fancy that that gladness speaks the levity
which comes from the absence of thought; it is rather from the depth
of thought that it springs, as from the depth of a sea comes its music.
See, while she