Hard times were now over with me, and I had to battle with poverty no more. My little kinsman’s death made a vast difference in my worldly prospects. I became next heir to a good estate. My uncle and his wife were not likely to have more children. “The woman is capable of committing any crime to disappoint you,” Sampson vowed; but, in truth, my Lady Warrington was guilty of no such treachery. Cruelly smitten by the stroke which fell upon them, Lady Warrington was taught by her religious advisers to consider it as a chastisement of Heaven, and submit to the Divine Will. “Whilst your son lived, your heart was turned away from the better world” (her clergyman told her), “and your ladyship thought too much of this. For your son’s advantage you desired rank and title. You asked and might have obtained an earthly coronet. Of what avail is it now, to one who has but a few years to pass upon earth — of what importance compared to the heavenly crown, for which you are an assured candidate?” The accident caused no little sensation. In the chapels of that enthusiastic sect, towards which, after her son’s death, she now more than ever inclined, many sermons were preached bearing reference to the event. Far be it from me to question the course which the bereaved mother pursued, or to regard with other than respect and sympathy any unhappy soul seeking that refuge whither sin and grief and disappointment fly for consolation. Lady Warrington even tried a reconciliation with myself. A year after her loss, being in London, she signified that she would see me, and I waited on her; and she gave me, in her usual didactic way, a homily upon my position and her own. She marvelled at the decree of Heaven, which had permitted, and how dreadfully punished! her poor child’s disobedience to her — a disobedience by which I was to profit. (It appeared my poor little man had disobeyed orders, and gone out with his gun, unknown to his mother.) She hoped that, should I ever succeed to the property, though the Warringtons were, thank Heaven, a long-lived family, except in my own father’s case, whose life had been curtailed by the excesses of a very ill-regulated youth — but should I ever succeed to the family estate and honours, she hoped, she prayed, that my present course of life might be altered; that I should part from my unworthy associates; that I should discontinue all connexion with the horrid theatre and its licentious frequenters; that I should turn to that quarter where only peace was to be had; and to those sacred duties which she feared — she very much feared that I had neglected. She filled her exhortation with Scripture language, which I do not care to imitate. When I took my leave she gave me a packet of sermons for Mrs. Warrington, and a little book of hymns by Miss Dora, who has been eminent in that society of which she and her mother became avowed professors subsequently, and who, after the dowager’s death, at Bath, three years since, married young Mr. Juffles, a celebrated preacher. The poor lady forgave me then, but she could not bear the sight of our boy. We lost our second child, and then my aunt and her daughter came eagerly enough to the poor suffering mother, and even invited us hither. But my uncle was now almost every day in our house. He would sit for hours looking at our boy. He brought him endless toys and sweetmeats. He begged that the child might call him Godpapa. When we felt our own grief (which at times still, and after the lapse of five-and-twenty years, strikes me as keenly as on the day when we first lost our little one)— when I felt my own grief, I knew how to commiserate his. But my wife could pity him before she knew what it was to lose a child of her own. The mother’s anxious heart had already divined the pang which was felt by the sorrow-stricken father; mine, more selfish, has only learned pity from experience, and I was reconciled to my uncle by my little baby’s coffin.

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