I love to think that it may be so; I love to think that the Lord, in His humanity, looks tenderly upon the mortal soil on which He sojourned in His wondrous life, and that here, perchance, in these very lands, made holy by His grace and power, our final rest shall be. It may be but a fancy; but it comes upon me with gentle might, like the whispered comfort of an angel. A new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness--a glorified humanity which, remaining human, is mortal no longer! with the judgment, and the condemnation, and the wars of the Lord over-past, and the earth and the heaven one fair broad country, and Himself over all, blessed for ever. These are the old man’s dreams; and they shed new glory over the pleasant places in which my lines have fallen-- “Oh, ye fountains, meadows, hills, and groves! Forbode not any severing of our loves! Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might. I only have relinquished one delight, To live beneath your more habitual sway. I love the brooks that down their channels fret, Even more than when I tripped, lightly as they; The innocent brightness of a new-born day Is lovely yet-- The clouds that gather round the setting sun Do take a sober colouring from an eye That hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality.” END OF BOOK I. BOOK II. RESOLUTIONS. CHAPTER I. There was a hardness in his cheek, There was a hardness in his eye.--PETER BELL. “I beg you will not misunderstand me, Mrs Oswald; I vow to you that this girl shall never cross my threshold, and if William persists in his folly he must choose between her and me; for assuredly he shall not keep his place with both. I tell you her father was a fool and a weakling, and you know the injury he did me. My mind is made up; before I receive this girl (I care nothing for her own good qualities--they do not concern me in the slightest) as my daughter, I will disown my son. If he wants to prolong her poverty, and to make himself a servant all his life, let him persist in his madness; and if you encourage him further in it, the consequences lie with yourselves. I have toiled and laboured to enrich him, and if he thwarts me thus, he shall rue it!”