"You are now," he added gently, "nearly as old as your Mother was "when I married her.”

I faid, "I fear I am not much "like her."

He faid nothing, only fmiled. I made bold to pursue :-" What was fhe like?"

Again he was filent, at least for a Minute; and then, in quite a changed Tone, with fomewhat hurried in it, cried,—

"Like the fresh, cool, pure Air of

1665.

And, kicking back his Chair, he got up, and began to walk haftily about the Chamber, as fearleffly as he always does when he is thinking of fomething else, I fpringing up to move one or two Chairs out of his Way. Hearing fome high Voices in the Offices, he presently observed, "A contentious Woman is like a "continuall Dropping. Shakspeare "spoke well when he said that a 66 fweet, low Voice is an excellent

66

Thing in Woman.

I wish you

1666.

"good Women would recollect that "one Avenue of my Senfes being

66

66

stopt, makes me keener to any

Impreffion on the others. Where

"Strife is, there is Confufion and Why should

66

every evil Work.

"not we dwell in Peace, in this

66

66

quiet little Neft, instead of ren

dering our Home liker to a Cage "of unclean Birds?"

Bunhill Fields, London,

Oct. 1666.

People have phanfied Appearances of Armies in the Air, flaming Swords, Fields of Battle, and other Images;

and,

1666.

and, truly, the Evening before we left Chalfont, methought I beheld the Glories of the ancient City CteSiphon in the Sunfet Clouds, with gilded Battlements, confpicuous far

-Turrets, and Terraces, and glittering Spires. The light-armed Parthians pouring through the Gates, in Coats of Mail, and military Pride. In the far Perspective of the open Plain, two ancient Rivers, the one winding, t'other straight, lofing themselves in the glowing Distance, among the Tents of the ten loft Tribes. Such are One's Dreams at Sunfet. And, when I caft down my dazed Eyes on the shaded Landskip,

all

all looked in Comparifon, fo black and bleak, that methought how dull and dreary this lower World must have appeared to Mofes when he defcended from Horeb, and to our Saviour, when he came down from the Mount of Transfiguration, and to St. Paul, when he dropt from the feventh Heaven.

What a Click, Click, the Bricklayers make with their Trowels, thus bringing me down from my Altitudes! Sure, we hardly knew how well off we were at Chalfont, till we came back to this unlucky Capital, looking as defolate as ferufalem, when the City was ruinated and the

People

1666.