But as indigenous flowers are eradicated by the spade and plough, so this feeling is destroyed in the stirring and bustling intercourse of commercial life. No room is left for it: as little of it at this time remains in wide America as in thickly peopled England. That to which soldiers and sailors are reconciled by the spirit of their profession and the chances of war and of the seas, the love of adventure and the desire of advancement cause others to regard with the same indifference; and these motives are so prevalent, that the dispersion of families and the consequent disruption of natural ties, if not occasioned by necessity, would now in most instances be the effect of choice. Even those to whom it is an inevitable evil, and who feel it deeply as such, look upon it as something in the appointed course of things, as much as infirmity and age and death. It is well for us that in early life we never think of the vicissitudes which lie before us; or look to them only with pleasurable anticipations as they approach. Youth Knows nought of changes: Age hath traced them oft, Expects and can interpret them.[1] The thought of them, when it comes across us in middle life, brings with it only a transient sadness, like the shadow of a passing cloud. We turn our eyes from them while they are in prospect, but when they are in retrospect many a longing lingering look is cast behind. So long as Mr. Allison was in business he looked to Thaxted Grange as the place where he hoped one day to enjoy the blessings of retirement,—that _otium cum dignitate_, which in a certain sense the prudent citizen is more likely to attain than the successful statesman. It was the pleasure of recollection that gave this hope its zest and its strength. But after the object which during so many years he had held in view, had been obtained, his day-dreams, if he had allowed them to take their course, would have recurred more frequently to Bishopsgate Street than they had ever wandered from thence to the scenes of his boyhood. They recurred thither oftener than he wished, although few men have been more masters of themselves; and then the remembrance of his wife, whom he had lost by a lingering disease in middle age; and of the children, those who had died during their childhood, and those who in reality were almost as much lost to him in the ways of the world, made him alway turn for comfort to the prospect of that better state of existence in which they should once more all be gathered together, and where there would be neither change nor parting. His thoughts often fell into this train, when on summer evenings he was taking a solitary pipe in his arbour, with the church in sight, and the church yard wherein at no distant time he was to be laid in his last abode. Such musings induced a sense of sober piety,—of thankfulness for former blessings, contentment with the