“Thy daughter, brother Field, is over-strong for me,” said Master Chester, turning from Edith with some moisture glistening in his keen dark eye. “Pray God she be not over-weak to try conclusions with a bitter adversary. Truly, brother, when these little ones grow valorous, I have a hope in me that God meaneth them to be victorious; and true it is that what doth but overcome our weaker parts, bringing womanish tears, doth oftentimes overcome the stronger parts of those afflictions, bringing deliverance--wherefore, we must e’en suffer her will, trusting that in it the Lord may manifest His will, and committing the little one whom God has given us, to the keeping of the God who gave her to us. Amen, and amen.” CHAPTER VII. “It is the business of a gentleman to be hospitable, following those noble gentlemen Abraham and Lot. It is his business to maintain peace, whereto he hath that brave gentleman, Moses, recommended for his pattern. It is his business to promote the welfare and prosperity of his country with his best endeavors, and with all his interest; in which practice the Sacred History doth propound divers gallant gentlemen (Joseph, Moses, Nehemiah, and all such renowned patriots), to guide him.”--BARROW. Sir Philip Dacre was of a class uncommon in those times. His father, whom report called a weak and ordinary man, with only the one gift of personal courage to distinguish him--and it scarcely did distinguish him among the host of cavaliers, whose sole standing-ground was this same gift of bravery--had fought his last at Worcester. Philip, a studious boy, dwelling alone in his earlier youth in the old, dark library at Thornleigh, and finally sent to spend long solitary years in Oxford, a stranger to all home or family enjoyments, had grown up a grave, imaginative student, with a sound and strong intellect, which rejoiced scarce less in those mighty things which Newton had but lately brought forth from the great ocean of the unknown, than in those wonderful human folk, with whom the poets of Elizabeth’s golden time had peopled many countries. He was of the class (scarce so courtly perhaps as the quaint olden gentleman, who has put it on record, that the history of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, was not sufficiently refined for the Court of Charles) of Evelyn, and his brother philosophers; not devoted to any one especial science, but with lively interest in, and considerable knowledge of them all--a youthful neophyte, who had not quite penetrated into the charmed circle of the juvenile Royal Society, then being formed; but who hung with eager curiosity and interest in its outer round. His travels in the simple North, and his late visit to Scotland, had given the Oxford scholar a strong leaning to the persecuted Presbyterians; and having had enshrined in his remembrance all his days, the object of his boyish sympathy and tears, the gentle memory of the