ellence of his successor can embody the conception once more.

I retired from the tumult of London, and returned to tastes which I had
never wholly forgotten; taking a small residence within a few miles of
this centre of the living world, and devoting my leisure to the enjoyments
of that life, which, in the purest days of man, was given to him as the
happiest, "to dress the garden, and keep it." Clotilde in all her tastes
joined with mine, or rather led them, with the instinctive elegance of a
female mind, accomplished in every grace of education. We read, wrote,
walked, talked, and pruned our rose-trees and gathered our carnations and
violets, together. She had already given me those pledges, which, while
they increase the anxiety, also increase the affection, of wedded life.
The education of our children was a new source of interest. They were
handsome and healthy. Their little sports, the growth of their young
perceptions, and the freshness of their ideas, renewed to us both all the
delights of society without their exhaustion; and when, after returning
from a day spent in the noise and bustle of London, I reached my rustic
gate, heard the cheerful voices of the little population which rushed down
the flowery avenue to cling upon my neck; and stood at the door of my
cottage, with my arm round the waist of my beautiful and fond wife,
breathing the evening fragrance of a thousand blooms, and enjoying the
cool air, and the purple glories of the sky--I often wondered why men
should seek for happiness in any other scene; and felt gratitude, not the
less sincere for its being calm and solemn, to the Giver of a lot so
nearly approaching to human fulness of joy.

But the world rolls on, let who will slumber among its roses. The
political world was awoke by a thunder-clap. Fox died. He was just six
months a minister! Such is ambition, such is the world. He died, like
Pitt, in the zenith of his powers, with his judgment improved and his
passions mitigated, with the noblest prospects of public utility before
his eyes, and the majestic responsibilities of a British minister assuming
their natural rank in his capacious mind. The times, too, were darkening;
and another "lodestar" was thus stricken from the national hemisphere, at
the moment when the nation most wanted guidance. The lights which remained
were many; but they were vague, feeble, and scattered. The "leader of the
starry host" was gone.

I cannot trust myself to speak