lour. And so he goes on, “from greater to greater,” as the newspapers say, but as a wise man says, from worse to worse. Above his daily life he sees no “primal virtues shine aloft as stars;” no
“Charities that soothe and heal and bless
“Are scattered at his feet like flowers.”
But one day a commercial panic, which even that masterly understanding could not foresee, shears off the half of his estate, rending the other half to shreds. Sickness shakes the costly door of his house; all the well-compacted windows rattle at the earthquake of misfortune; child after child drops through the wealthy floor, and perishes in the unseen night beneath; a lone and neglected kinswoman, no longer “a distant connection of the family,” has just cradled his dying babe in her friendly bosom. Where now is his forgetfulness of his poor relations? Where is the pomp and pride of his riches? His “high, prosperous voice” has shrunken down to a modest, yet manly tone; that fool's bolt of brittle opinion which he delivered so readily just now, is shot no more at vanity's low mark; and arrogance has faded off from that humiliated brow. The show-wife and the poor residue of his show-children are real enough now. Sorrow has raised the human heart which prosperity had deeply buried up. The cloud of vanity comes down in a cold, thin patter of rain, which yet starts new greenness in the thirsty soil, and there spring up virtues which else were strangers in that ground-parched with being too near the sun. It is the real God he communes with now; the Infinite, whom no prosperity could ever drive away. We close our eyes against the great God, but His never slumber nor sleep. The show-Bible lies there as idle as before, on its cushion, but the old plain Book, thumbed all over with his mother's piety—who has long since gone where she can be wise without study, and pious without Bibles—or by his own youthful touch, the old Bible comes back to his bosom, and David, and John, and Jesus speak comfort to his newly-awakened soul. Through the rents in his estate there come in
“The charities that soothe, and heal, and bless.”
