of exquisite
enjoyment are they shut out, to whom Providence has not vouchsafed
those beloved beings on whom the heart lavishes the whole fulness of its
rapture! No wonder that their own affections should wither in the cold
gloom of disappointed hope, or their hearts harden into that moody
spirit of worldly-mindedness which adopts for its offspring the miser's
idol.

Whether Fardorougha felt the want of children acutely or otherwise,
could not be inferred from any visible indication of regret on his part
by those who knew him. His own wife, whose facilities of observation
were so great and so frequent, was only able to suspect in the
affirmative. For himself he neither murmured nor repined; but she could
perceive that, after a few years had passed, a slight degree of gloom
began to settle on him, and an anxiety about his crops, and his few
cattle, and the produce of his farm. He also began to calculate the
amount of what might be saved from the fruits of their united industry.
Sometimes, but indeed upon rare occasions, his temper appeared inclining
to be irascible or impatient; but in general it was grave, cold,
and inflexible, without any outbreaks of passion, or the slightest
disposition to mirth. His wife's mind, however, was by no means so firm
as his, nor so free from the traces of that secret regret which preyed
upon it. She both murmured and repined, and often in terms which drew
from Fardorougha a cool rebuke for her want of resignation to the will
of God. As years advanced, however, her disappointment became harassing
even to herself, and now that hope began to die away, her heart
gradually partook of the cool worldly spirit which had seized upon the
disposition of her husband, Though cultivating but a small farm, which
they held at a high rent, yet, by the dint of frugality and incessant
diligence, they were able to add a little each year to the small stock
of money which they had contrived to put together. Still would the
unhappy recollection that they were childless steal painfully and
heavily over them; the wife would sometimes murmur, and the husband
reprove her, but in a tone so cool and indifferent that she could not
avoid concluding that his own want of resignation, though not expressed,
was at heart equal to her own. Each also became somewhat religious,
and both remarkable for a punctual attendance upon the rites of their
church, and that in proportion as the love of temporal things overcame
them. In