e
able though worldly mind could appreciate his conversation; the children
mourned for their playmate, who was so much more affable than their own
stiff-neckclothed brothers; and Evelyn was at least more serious and
thoughtful than she had ever been before, and the talk of others seemed
to her wearisome, trite, and dull.

* The object of parochial reform is not that of economy alone;
not merely to reduce poor-rates. The ratepayer ought to remember
that the more he wrests from the grip of the sturdy mendicant,
the more he ought to bestow on undeserved distress. Without the
mitigations of private virtue, every law that benevolists could
make would be harsh.

Was Maltravers happy in his new pursuits? His state of mind at that time
it is not easy to read. His masculine spirit and haughty temper were
wrestling hard against a feeling that had been fast ripening into
passion; but at night, in his solitary and cheerless home, a vision, too
exquisite to indulge, would force itself upon him, till he started from
the revery, and said to his rebellious heart: "A few more years, and
thou wilt be still. What in this brief life is a pang more or less?
Better to have nothing to care for, so wilt thou defraud Fate, thy
deceitful foe! Be contented that thou art alone!" Fortunate was it,
then, for Maltravers, that he was in his native land, not in climes
where excitement is in the pursuit of pleasure rather than in the
exercise of duties. In the hardy air of the liberal England, he
was already, though unknown to himself, bracing and ennobling his
dispositions and desires. It is the boast of this island that the slave
whose foot touches the soil is free. The boast may be enlarged. Where so
much is left to the people, where the life of civilization, not locked
up in the tyranny of Central Despotism, spreads, vivifying, restless,
ardent, through every vein of the healthful body, the most distant
province, the obscurest village, has claims on our exertions, our
duties, and forces us into energy and citizenship. The spirit of
liberty, that strikes the chain from the slave, binds the freeman to
his brother. This is the Religion of Freedom. And hence it is that
the stormy struggles of free States have been blessed with results
of Virtue, of Wisdom, and of Genius by Him who bade us love one
another,--not only that love in itself is excellent, but that from
love, which in its widest sense is but the spiritual term for liberty,
wha