communicated to me, but with manifest reluctance, that they were in imminent danger of being deprived of their miserable furniture, and turned out of their wretched habitation, by Lawrence Litigate, Esquire, their landlord, for arrears of rent amounting to five pounds. _Mr. Forester._ Which, of course, you paid? _Mr. Fax._ I did so; but I do not see that it is of course. Mr. Forester, Mr. Fax, and Sir Oran were still leaning over the gate of the cottage, when a peasant came whistling along the road. ‘Pray, my honest friend,’ said Mr. Fax, ‘can you inform me what has become of the family which inhabited this cottage two years ago?’—‘Ye’ll voind them,’ said the peasant, ‘about a mile vurther an, just by the lake’s edge like, wi’ two large elms by the door, and a vir tree.’ He resumed his tune and his way. The philosophical trio proceeded on their walk. _Mr. Forester._ You have said little of his wife. _Mr. Fax._ She was an interesting creature. With her the feelings of misfortune had subsided into melancholy silence, while with him they broke forth in misanthropical satire. _Mr. Forester._ And their children? _Mr. Fax._ They would have been fine children, if they had been better clothed and fed. _Mr. Forester._ Did they seem to repent their marriage? _Mr. Fax._ Not for themselves. They appeared to have no wish but to live and die together. For their children, indeed, I could easily perceive they felt more grief than they expressed. _Mr. Forester._ You have scarcely made out your case. Poverty had certainly come in at the door, but Love does not seem to have flown out at the window. You would not have prevailed on them to separate at the price of living in palaces. The energy of intellect was not deadened; the independence of spirit was not broken. The participation of love communicates a luxury to sorrow, that all the splendour of selfishness can never bestow. If, as has been said, a friend is more valuable than the elements of fire and water, how much more valuable must be the one only associate, the more than friend, to him whom in affliction and in poverty all other friends have abandoned! If the sun shines equally on the palace and the cottage, why should not love, the sun of the intellectual world, shine equally on both? More needful, indeed, is its genial light to the latter, where there is no worldly splendour to diminish or divide its radiance. [Illustration: _Sir Oran sat down in the artist’s seat._]