Outside this inner world of our own lay a bright and friendly world all around us. First, our Father, sweet Lady Lucy, and Aunt Gretel--scarcely indeed outside, except by the fact of their not quite understanding what we had within, regarding us, as they fondly did, as dear happy children not yet out of our paradise of childhood; next Aunt Dorothy, Job Forster, and Rachel, guarding us as fondly, though anxiously, as on the unconscious eve of encounter with our dragons and leviathans; and beyond, the village, of which we were the children; the country, which was our mother; the world, of which we were the heirs. For to us in those days there were no harassing Philistines, no crushing Babylon; no Egyptians behind, nor Red Sea before. The world was to be conquered, but not as a prostrate foe, rather as a willing tributary to Truth and Right. The kings of Tarshish and of the isles were to bring presents; Sheba and Seba were to offer gifts. The wilderness and the solitary place were to be glad for us, and the desert was to rejoice and blossom as the rose. Meanwhile Lady Lucy came back to her old place in my heart. Her sweet motherliness seemed to brood like the wings of a dove over our whole happy world. Harry Davenant came more than once to the Hall, and stayed a few days, to Lady Lucy's perfect content, and entered into our pursuits as keenly as any of us. Only with him there was always an undertone of sadness, a despondency about the country and the world, a bitterness about the times, a slight cynicism about men and women, inevitable, perhaps, to a noble spirit like his, which (as it seems to me) has lost its way, and strayed into the backward current, contrary to all the generous forward movements of the age; but strongly contrasted with the steadfast, hopeful temper no danger could daunt and no defeat could damp, which characterized the nobler spirits on the patriot side. The noble Sir Bevil Grenvill had bitter thoughts of his contemporaries; the generous Lord Falkland craved for peace and welcomed death. Eliot, Pym, Hampden, Cromwell, Milton, looked for liberty; believed in the triumph of truth; thought England worth fighting for, living for, if needful, dying for; they braved death indeed like heroes, they met it like Christians, but they did not long for it like men sick and hopeless of the world. If God had willed it so, they had rather have lived on, because of the great hopes that inspired them, because they believed that not fate nor the devil were at the heart of the world, or at the head of the nations; but God. Yet about such men as Harry Davenant there was an inexpressible fascination. There is something that irresistibly touches the heart in heroism which, like Hector's of Troy, is nourished, not by hope, but by duty; which sacrifices self in a cause which it believes no courage and no sacrifice can make victorious, and bates no jot of heart when all hope has fled.