"Therefore, O my God!" thought Aubrey, as he gazed upon the lovely scenes familiar to him from his birth, and from which a few short hours were to separate him forever, "I do acknowledge Thy hand in what has befallen me, and Thy mercy which enables me to bear it, as from Thee." The scene around him was tranquil and beautiful--inexpressibly beautiful. He stood under the shadow of a mighty elm-tree, the last of a long and noble avenue, which he had been pacing in deep thought for upwards of an hour. The ground was considerably elevated above the level of the rest of the park. No sound disturbed the serene repose of the approaching evening, except the distant and gradually diminishing sounds issuing from an old rookery, and the faint low bubbling of a clear streamlet which flowed not far from where he stood. Here and there, under the deepening shadows cast by the lofty trees, might be seen the glancing forms of deer, the only live things visible. "Life," said Aubrey, to himself, with a sigh, as he leaned against the trunk of the grand old tree under which he stood, and gazed with a fond and mournful eye on the lovely scenes stretching before him, to which the subdued radiance of the departing sunlight communicated a tone of tender pensiveness; "life is, in truth, what the Scripture--what the voice of nature--represents it--a long journey, during which the traveller stops at many resting places. Some of them are more, others less beautiful; from some he parts with more, from others with less regret; but _part he must_, and pursue his journey, though he may often turn back to gaze with lingering fondness and admiration at the scene which he has last quitted. The next stage may be--_as all his journey might have been_--bleak and desolate; but, through _that_ he is only passing: he will not be condemned to stay in it, as he was not permitted to dwell in the other; he is still journeying on, along a route which he cannot mistake, to the point of his destination, his journey's end--the shores of the vast, immeasurable, boundless ocean of eternity--HIS HOME!"