Western plateau and the beautiful residence
behind them, are the same to-day that they were when we first looked
upon them; but a new life and a new influence inform them all. Nature
holds her unvarying frame, but the life upon the canvas is what we paint
from year to year. The river sings to vice as it sings to virtue. The
birds carol the same, whether selfishness or love be listening. The
great mountains rejoice in the sun, or drape their brows in clouds,
irrespective of the eyes that regard them.

This one fact remains good in Sevenoaks, and the world over. The man who
holds the financial power and the social throne of a town, makes that
town, in a good degree, what he is. If he is virtuous, noble, unselfish,
good, the elements beneath him shape themselves, consciously or
unconsciously, to his character. Vice shrinks into disgrace, or flies to
more congenial haunts. The greed for gold which grasps and over-reaches,
becomes ashamed, or changes to neighborly helpfulness. The discontent
that springs up in the shadow of an unprincipled and boastful worldly
success, dies; and men become happy in the toil that wins a comfortable
shelter and daily bread, when he to whom all look up, looks down upon
them with friendly and sympathetic eyes, and holds his wealth and power
in service of their good.

Paul Benedict is now the proprietor of Sevenoaks; and from the happy day
in which he, with his sister and child, came to the occupation of the
mansion which his old persecutor had built for himself, the fortunes and
character of the town have mended. Even the poor-house has grown more
comfortable in its apartments and administration, while year by year its
population has decreased. Through these first years, the quiet man has
moved around his mill and his garden, his mind teeming with suggestions,
and filling with new interest in their work the dull brains that had
been worn deep and dry with routine. All eyes turn upon him with
affection. He is their brother as well as their master.

In the great house, there is a happy woman. She has found something to
love and something to do. These were all she needed to make her
supremely self-respectful, happy, and, in the best degree, womanly.
Willful, ambitious, sacrificing her young affections to gold at the
first, and wasting years in idleness and unworthy intrigue, for the lack
of affection and the absence of motive to usefulness and industry, she
has found, at last, the secret of her w