continued, in a lowered voice, “is, that these vexations are a sign and a token, and a gentle training for graver troubles to come. My children have been accustomed to think that there may be something worse to bear than the deaths of the martyrs, when the world lay in darkness, and the heathen raged. Ah! I see we are of one mind about those things: and it is well that we are. The world is dark and raging about us. Let my children understand and remember why. Satan and Christ are contending for this kingdom and people: and those who side with Christ must not only hold their life in their hand, but do what is harder,—yield up cheerfully the lives which are dearer than their own.”
“Can it possibly come to that, sir?” asked Elizabeth.
“I have no doubt that it will. ‘When?’ At the end of the present reign, if not sooner; and it may be next week, or to-morrow. The spirit of persecution rages over the land, seeking to devour such as ourselves. There will be no more peace and quiet for us till the strife is over.”
“I have beheld,” said Madam Lisle, “the composure with which men have gone to their deaths, young and old alike, because they saw a brighter day coming for those who should live after them. Where that forecast is granted, it seems not to be very difficult to give away one’s life. But there is no saying: and God keep us from presumptuous assurance!”
“Amen!” said those who heard her.
“Our children are not daunted,” the Squire observed to the mother, who was gazing upon their young faces.
“I should not fear for them,” she answered, “if God asked the lives of any of them at an hour like this, when they are wrought up to courage and cheerfulness. ‘God loveth a cheerful giver;’ and there is cheerfulness in their hearts, and His love is on their faces. But how will it be if trials come, one upon another, for months and years, wearing the strength and bearing upon the patience? There are worse punishments than death in the hand of our enemies; and there is meantime a suspense, and a dread, and a vexation of spirit which—which—I would fain see my children spared.”
“They know, however,” said their father, “that there is a rest remaining for the people of God.”
As he rose and hastened away the party of exiles, as they called themselves, there was not a gloomy countenance in the whole company.
Before the parents slept, they indulged in some natural mutual congratulations on the promising spirit of their children. Not less gratified were they with the “solidity,” as they termed it, of their daughter elect, whose training had been that of the outside world, and who yet manifested, quite unconsciously, as noble a courage—perhaps as devout a courage—as any child of grace could be blessed with.
“Has this changed thy view in regard to Joanna?” the anxious mother inquired.
She had long had much conflict of mind about this child,—so highly endowed, as she believed, and now so cut off from all chance of cultivation since the departure of the family tutor. Madam Lisle, being inquired of by both parents, had given her opinion. Why this sort of “talent” should be buried, more than any other, she could not see. In her eyes it was no sin, but the contrary, to put young minds under the best instruction that could be had. She was going where some little kinswomen of hers were at a sober and sound school, under a devout and staunch Protestant woman,—a lady whose repute was high. If Joanna’s parents were inclined to give her such an education, the child might travel with Madam Lisle, who would place her at this school at Taunton, on her way to Wells.
“I should like to know thy view in regard to Joanna,” the mother repeated.
“I promised to consider the case, and I will do so,” he replied; “hut I can say nothing till we have sought guidance.”
The parents prayed for direction as to their duty to their child as fervently and as naturally as if the one had not been as spirited a country gentleman as ever led the hunt or commanded the militia; and the other as devoted to the small occupations and interests of life as the praying nun was above them.
“If I were sure that there is no poison of prelacy in that school—,” said the Squire, after they had risen from their knees. “But I fear Bishop Ken has his eye upon it.”
“Bishop Ken’s is not an evil eye, surely,” was the reply. “How much of the poison of prelacy is there in Madam Lisle? And he has looked upon her with the eye of a friend for many a year.”
“That is true.”
And so the matter closed—somewhat hopefully for Joanna.
BURIED HISTORY.
What are the secrets that remain in the keeping of our Mother Earth? Such was my soliloquy as I passed out of the galleries containing the antiquities in the British Museum. All things earthly must pass away, we know; but the mind is staggered as it contemplates the relics still left to us of great empires of which history gives us but a hazy dream. Year by year Earth, the great tomb of all animate and inanimate things, is casting up fragments which speak of the mighty past—fragments which come like a resurrection to corroborate the traditions of history, and sometimes to correct or restore its lost or faded pages. Everything that we see about us, from the primal granite rocks to the child’s toy which ministers to the whim of the moment, is by a slow process of disintegration passing away into a fine dust, which goes on for ever, building up the crust of the globe—a fine dust which in the course of time becomes animated with verdant sod, and to all appearance silently obliterates the marks which humanity is ever graving upon its surface, or building or shaping with its pigmy hands. To all appearances only, however; for year by year we are
