e so many shams, which flitted before him in sun-bright hours,
but had no root in his inward nature, and fell from him, like the
helpless December leaves, in the hour of his affliction. He felt now
_where_ his heart and his life lay. His birth, his parentage, his
education, his home, were great realities; to these his being was
united; out of these he grew. He felt he must be what Providence had
made him. What is called the pursuit of truth, seemed an idle dream. He
had great tangible duties to his father's memory, to his mother and
sisters, to his position; he felt sick of all theories, as if they had
taken him in; and he secretly resolved never more to have anything to do
with them. Let the world go on as it might, happen what would to others,
his own place and his own path were clear. He would go back to Oxford,
attend steadily to his books, put aside all distractions, avoid
bye-paths, and do his best to acquit himself well in the schools. The
Church of England as it was, its Articles, bishops, preachers,
professors, had sufficed for much better persons than he was; they were
good enough for him. He could not do better than imitate the life and
death of his beloved father; quiet years in the country at a distance
from all excitements, a round of pious, useful works among the poor, the
care of a village school, and at length the death of the righteous.

At the moment, and for some time to come, he had special duties towards
his mother; he wished, as far as might be, to supply to her the place of
him she had lost. She had great trials before her still; if it was a
grief to himself to leave Hartley, what would it be to her? Not many
months would pass before she would have to quit a place ever dear, and
now sacred in her thoughts; there was in store for her the anguish of
dismantling the home of many years, and the toil and whirl of packing; a
wearied head and an aching heart at a time when she would have most need
of self-possession and energy.

Such were the thoughts which came upon him again and again in those
sorrowful weeks. A leaf had been turned over in his life; he could not
be what he had been. People come to man's estate at very different
ages. Youngest sons in a family, like monks in a convent, may remain
children till they have reached middle age; but the elder, should their
father die prematurely, are suddenly ripened into manhood, when they are
almost boys. Charles had left Oxford a clever unformed youth; h