yearned for explanations; all guesses but bewildered me more. In his
family, with one exception, I found no congenial association. His nephew
seemed to me an ordinary specimen of a very trite human nature,--a young
man of limited ideas, fair moral tendencies, going mechanically right
where not tempted to wrong. The same desire of gain which had urged him
to gamble and speculate when thrown in societies rife with such example,
led him, now in the Bush, to healthful, industrious, persevering labour.
"Spes fovet agricolas," says the poet; the same Hope which entices
the fish to the hook impels the plough of the husband-man. The
young farmer's young wife was somewhat superior to him; she had more
refinement of taste, more culture of mind, but, living in his life, she
was inevitably levelled to his ends and pursuits; and, next to the babe
in the cradle, no object seemed to her so important as that of guarding
the sheep from the scab and the dingoes. I was amazed to see how quietly
a man whose mind was so stored by life and by books as that of Julius
Faber--a man who had loved the clash of conflicting intellects, and
acquired the rewards of fame--could accommodate himself to the cabined
range of his kinsfolks' half-civilized existence, take interest in their
trivial talk, find varying excitement in the monotonous household of a
peasant-like farmer. I could not help saying as much to him once. "My
friend," replied the old man, "believe me that the happiest art of
intellect, however lofty, is that which enables it to be cheerfully at
home with the Real!"

The only one of the family in which Faber was domesticated in whom I
found an interest, to whose talk I could listen without fatigue, was the
child Amy. Simple though she was in language, patient of labour as the
most laborious, I recognized in her a quiet nobleness of sentiment,
which exalted above the commonplace the acts of her commonplace life.
She had no precocious intellect, no enthusiastic fancies, but she had an
exquisite activity of heart. It was her heart that animated her sense
of duty, and made duty a sweetness and a joy. She felt to the core
the kindness of those around her; exaggerated, with the warmth of her
gratitude, the claims which that kindness imposed. Even for the blessing
of life, which she shared with all creation, she felt as if singled
out by the undeserved favour of the Creator, and thus was filled with
religion, because she was filled with love.

M