present, and humble yet sure and certain hope for futurity, which might vainly have been sought at prayer meetings, or evening lectures, where indeed little good can ever be obtained without some deleterious admixture, or alloy of baser feelings. [Footnote 1: ISAAC COMMENUS.] The happiness which he had found in retirement was of a different kind from what he had contemplated: for the shades of evening were gathering when he reached the place of his long-wished-for rest, and the picture of it which had imprinted itself on his imagination was a morning view. But he had been prepared for this by that slow change of which we are not aware during its progress till we see it reflected in others, and are thus made conscious of it in ourselves; and he found a satisfaction in the station which he occupied there, too worthy in its nature to be called pride, and which had not entered into his anticipations. It is said to have been a saying of George the Third, that the happiest condition in which an Englishman could be placed, was just below that wherein it would have been necessary for him to act as a Justice of the Peace, and above that which would have rendered him liable to parochial duties. This was just Mr. Allison's position: there was nothing which brought him into rivalry or competition with the surrounding Squirarchy, and the yeomen and peasantry respected him for his own character, as well as for his name's-sake. He gave employment to more persons than when he was engaged in trade, and his indirect influence over them was greater; that of his sister was still more. The elders of the village remembered her in her youth, and loved her for what she then had been as well as for what she now was; the young looked up to her as the Lady Bountiful, to whom no one that needed advice or assistance ever applied in vain. She it was who provided those much approved plum-cakes, not the less savoury for being both homely and wholesome, the thought of which induced the children to look on to their Lent examination with hope, and prepare for it with alacrity. Those offices in a parish which are the province of the Clergyman's wife, when he has made choice of one who knows her duty and has both will and ability to discharge it, Miss Allison performed; and she rendered Mr. Bacon the farther, and to him individually the greater service of imparting to his daughter those instructions which she had no mother to impart. Deborah could not have had a better teacher; but as the present chapter has extended to a sufficient length, _Diremo il resto in quel che vien dipoi, Per non venire a noja a me e voi._[2] [Footnote 2: ORLANDO INNAMORATO.] CHAPTER CIII. A FEW PARTICULARS CONCERNING NO. 113 BISHOPSGATE STREET WITHIN; AND OF THE FAMILY AT THAXTED GRANGE. Opinion is the rate of things, From hence our peace doth flow; I have a better fate than kings, Because I think it so. KATHARINE PHILIPS.