stalwart sons and tall daughters was housed and reared, and came to man
and woman-hood, in that nest of little chambers; so that the face of the
earth was peppered with the children of the manse, and letters with
outlandish stamps became familiar to the local postman, and the walls of
the little chambers brightened with the wonders of the East. The dullest
could see this was a house that had a pair of hands in divers foreign
places: a well-beloved house--its image fondly dwelt on by many
travellers.

Here lived an ancestor of mine, who was a herd of men. I read him,
judging with older criticism the report of childish observation, as a
man of singular simplicity of nature; unemotional, and hating the
display of what he felt; standing contented on the old ways; a lover of
his life and innocent habits to the end. We children admired him: partly
for his beautiful face and silver hair, for none more than children are
concerned for beauty, and above all for beauty in the old; partly for
the solemn light in which we beheld him once a week, the observed of all
observers, in the pulpit. But his strictness and distance, the effect, I
now fancy, of old age, slow blood, and settled habit, oppressed us with
a kind of terror. When not abroad, he sat much alone, writing sermons
or letters to his scattered family in a dark and cold room with a
library of bloodless books--or so they seemed in those days, although I
have some of them now on my own shelves and like well enough to read
them; and these lonely hours wrapped him in the greater gloom for our
imaginations. But the study had a redeeming grace in many Indian
pictures, gaudily coloured and dear to young eyes. I cannot depict (for
I have no such passions now) the greed with which I beheld them; and
when I was once sent in to say a psalm to my grandfather, I went,
quaking indeed with fear, but at the same time glowing with hope that,
if I said it well, he might reward me with an Indian picture.

"Thy foot He'll not let slide, nor will
He slumber that thee keeps,"

it ran: a strange conglomerate of the unpronounceable, a sad model to
set in childhood before one who was himself to be a versifier, and a
task in recitation that really merited reward. And I must suppose the
old man thought so too, and was either touched or amused by the
performance; for he took me in his arms with most unwonted tenderness,
and kissed me, and gave me a little kindly sermon for my psalm; so that,