equality--wealth and station--the
conventional distinctions to which, after all, a man of ordinary sense
must sooner or later reconcile himself--but in that one respect wherein
all, high and low, pretend to the same rights--rights which a man of
moderate warmth of feeling can never willingly renounce--viz., a partner
in a lot however obscure; a kind face by a hearth, no matter how mean
it be! And his happier friend, like all men full of life, was full of
himself--full of his love, of his future, of the blessings of home,
and wife, and children. Then, too, the young bride seemed so fair, so
confiding, and so tender; so formed to grace the noblest or to cheer the
humblest home! And both were so happy, so all in all to each other,
as they left that barren threshold! And the priest felt all this, as,
melancholy and envious, he turned from the door in that November day, to
find himself thoroughly alone. He now began seriously to muse upon
those fancied blessings which men wearied with celibacy see springing,
heavenward, behind the altar. A few weeks afterwards a notable change
was visible in the good man's exterior. He became more careful of his
dress, he shaved every morning, he purchased a crop-eared Welsh cob; and
it was soon known in the neighbourhood that the only journey the cob was
ever condemned to take was to the house of a certain squire, who, amidst
a family of all ages, boasted two very pretty marriageable daughters.
That was the second holy day-time of poor Caleb--the love-romance of his
life: it soon closed. On learning the amount of the pastor's stipend the
squire refused to receive his addresses; and, shortly after, the girl
to whom he had attached himself made what the world calls a happy
match: and perhaps it was one, for I never heard that she regretted the
forsaken lover. Probably Caleb was not one of those whose place in a
woman's heart is never to be supplied. The lady married, the world went
round as before, the brook danced as merrily through the village,
the poor worked on the week-days, and the urchins gambolled round the
gravestones on the Sabbath,--and the pastor's heart was broken. He
languished gradually and silently away. The villagers observed that
he had lost his old good-humoured smile; that he did not stop every
Saturday evening at the carrier's gate, to ask if there were any news
stirring in the town which the carrier weekly visited; that he did not
come to borrow the stray newspapers that n