e far in the purchase of English soil.

Considerably advanced in years before he thought of marrying, he died
while Godfrey, whom he intended bringing up to a profession, was yet a
child; and his widow, carrying out his intention, had educated the boy
with a view to the law. Godfrey, however, had positively declined
entering on the studies special to a career he detested; nor was it
difficult to reconcile his mother to the enforced change of idea, when
she found that his sole desire was to settle down with her, and manage
the two hundred acres his father had left him. He took his place in the
county, therefore, as a yeoman-farmer--none the less a gentleman by
descent, character, and education. But while in genuine culture and
refinement the superior of all the landed proprietors in the
neighborhood, and knowing it, he was the superior of most of them in
this also, that he counted it no derogation from the dignity he valued
to put his hands upon occasion to any piece of work required about the
place.

His nature was too large, however, and its needs therefore too many, to
allow of his spending his energies on the property; and he did not
brood over such things as, so soon as they become cares, become
despicable. How much time is wasted in what is called thought, but is
merely care--an anxious idling over the fancied probabilities of
result! Of this fault, I say, Godfrey was not guilty--more, however, I
must confess, from healthful drawings in other directions, than from
philosophy or wisdom: he was _a reader_--not in the sense of a man who
derives intensest pleasure from the absorption of intellectual
pabulum--one not necessarily so superior as some imagine to the
_gourmet_, or even the _gourmand_: in his reading Godfrey nourished
certain of the higher tendencies of his nature--read with a constant
reference to his own views of life, and the confirmation, change, or
enlargement of his theories of the same; but neither did he read with
the highest aim of all--the enlargement of reverence, obedience, and
faith; for he had never turned his face full in the direction of
infinite growth--the primal end of a man's being, who is that he may
return to the Father, gathering his truth as he goes. Yet by the simple
instincts of a soul undebased by self-indulgence or low pursuits, he
was drawn ever toward things lofty and good; and life went calmly on,
bearing Godfrey Wardour toward middle age, unruffled either by anxiety
or ambit