n the Sunday morning on which the good man preached for the
first time in his lawn sleeves. Their heads were turned for the time;
but they gradually came right again, as the ladies became accustomed to
the summits of human affairs. Let it be said for the bishop himself,
that there was not a vestige of that sense of elevation about him. He
looked perfectly modest and unaffected. His dress was remarkably ill put
on, and his sleeves stuck out in the most awkward fashion ever assumed
by drapery. I suppose that sometimes these rises in life come very
unexpectedly. I have heard of a man who, when he received a letter from
the Prime Minister of the day offering him a place of great dignity,
thought the letter was a hoax, and did not notice it for several days.
You could not certainly infer from his modesty what has proved to be the
fact, that he has filled his place admirably well. The possibility of
such material changes must no doubt tend to prolong the interest in
life, which is ready to flag as years go on. But perhaps with the
majority of men the level is found before middle age, and no very great
worldly change awaits them. The path stretches on, with its ups and
downs; and they only hope for strength for the day. But in such men's
lot of humble duty and quiet content there remains room for many fears.
All human beings who are as well off as they can ever be, and so who
have little room for hope, seem to be liable to the invasion of great
fear as they look into the future. It seems to be so with kings, and
with great nobles. Many such have lived in a nervous dread of change,
and have ever been watching the signs of the times with apprehensive
eyes. Nothing that can happen can well make such better; and so they
suffer from the vague foreboding of something which will make them
worse. And the same law reaches to those in whom hope is narrowed down,
not by the limit of grand possibility, but of little,--not by the fact
that they have got all that mortal can get, but by the fact that they
have got the little which is all that Providence seems to intend to give
to _them_. And, indeed, there is something that is almost awful, when
your affairs are all going happily, when your mind is clear and equal
to its work, when your bodily health is unbroken, when your home is
pleasant, when your income is ample, when your children are healthy and
merry and hopeful,--in looking on to Future Years. The more happy
you are, the more there is