Perhaps too this timely extinction was ordained in mercy, to avert consequences which might else so probably have arisen from his forsaking the station in which he was born; a lowly, but safe station, exposed to fewer dangers, trials or temptations, than any other in this age or country, with which he was enabled to compare it. The sentiment with which Sanazzaro concludes his Arcadia was often in his mind, not as derived from that famous author, but self-originated: _per cosa vera ed indubitata tener ti puoi, che chi più di nascoso e più lontano dalla moltitudine vive, miglior vive; e colui trà mortali si può con più verità chiamar beato, che senza invidia delle altrui grandezze, con modesto animo della sua fortuna si contenta._ His father had removed him from that station; he would not say unwisely, for his father was a wise and good man, if ever man deserved to be so called; and he could not say unhappily; for assuredly he knew that all the blessings which had earnestly been prayed for, had attended the determination. Through that blessing he had obtained the whole benefit which his father desired for him, and had escaped evils which perhaps had not been fully apprehended. His intellectual part had received all the improvement of which it was capable, and his moral nature had sustained no injury in the process; nor had his faith been shaken, but stood firm, resting upon a sure foundation. But the entail of humble safety had been, as it were, cut off; the birth-right—so to speak—had been renounced. His children, if God had given him children, must have mingled in the world, there to shape for themselves their lot of good or evil; and he knew enough of the world to know how manifold and how insidious are the dangers, which, in all its paths, beset us. He never could have been to them what his father had been to him;—that was impossible. They could have had none of those hallowing influences both of society and solitude to act upon them, which had imbued his heart betimes, and impressed upon his youthful mind a character that no after circumstances could corrupt. They must inevitably have been exposed to more danger, and could not have been so well armed against it. That consideration reconciled him to being childless. God, who knew what was best for him, had ordained that it should be so; and he did not, and ought not to regret, that having been the most cultivated of his race, and so far the happiest, it was decreed that he should be the last. God's will is best. Ὣς ἔφατ ἔυχὸμενος; for with some aspiration of piety he usually concluded his more serious discourse, either giving it utterance, or with a silent motion of the lips, which the expression of his countenance, as well as the tenour of what had gone before, rendered intelligible to those who knew him as I did. CHAPTER LXII. IN WHICH IS RELATED THE DISCOVERY OF A CERTAIN PORTRAIT AT DONCASTER.