To ramble about that old cathedral, to think of that dear, sweet face, was happiness; yet it left so much to long for and regret, that sometimes the pain was greater than the happiness. But as he sits beside that fair girl in the farmer’s parlour, what does he think of happiness now? The philosopher says perfect happiness was never intended by the Deity to be the lot of man, but that He has given us the power of an exceeding near approach to it. And we do not hesitate to say, that He does give to some mortals a foretaste of that perfect happiness which is to be the undying prize of the future day. A wise lady, and a duchess, too, has said that our happiness in this world depends on the affection we are enabled to inspire. Let Phœbe and Arthur be judged by this standard, and they are to be envied indeed. To sit hand in hand, to walk and talk with freedom of their love, of the little incidents of past days, to recall their moments of doubt, and look back to times of utter hopelessness, to trace their little acts of sympathy from the first days of their love, to recall that grand festival beneath the cathedral roof, to think of the days when each loved the other in secret and in fear and dread and in solitude! Was not this perfect happiness? Friend Greybeard, does not the old love break out afresh as you contemplate two lovers like these? Don’t you remember the old dream? If there is a picture in thy brain such as that of which sings the poet whose scrap of rhyme, with an American name at the bottom, has just attracted my attention in the corner of the county newspaper, do not shut it out. “Upon the budded apple-trees The robins sing by twos and threes, And ever at the faintest breeze Down drops a blossom; And ever would that lover be The wind that robs the burgeoned tree, And lifts the soft tress daintily On Beauty’s bosom. “Ah, greybeard, what a happy thing It was, when life was in its spring, To peep through love’s betrothal ring At fields Elysian; To move and breathe in magic air, To think that all that seems is fair-- Ah, ripe young mouth and golden hair, Thou pretty vision!”