* (



OPEN SECRET OF EIS LIFE. 349

" Some mornings ago I said to myself, ' Is there no book of
piety you could still write ? Forget the basenesses, miseries,
and abominations of this fast-sinking world, — its punishments,
come, or at hand ; and dwell among the poor struggling
elements of pity, of love, of awe and worship, you can still
discern in it ! * Better so. Right, sui'ely, far better. I wish,
I wish I could. Was my great grief sent to me perhaps for
that end ? In rare better moments I sometimes strive to
entertain an imagination of that kind ; but as to doing any-
thing in consequence, alas ! alas ! " •

" One evening,*' he afterwards adds, " I think in the spring
of 1866 [only a few weeks before her death], we two had
come up from dinner and were sitting in this room, very weak
and weary creatures ; perhaps even I the wearier, though she
far the weaker ; I at least far more inclined to sleep, which
directly after dinner was not good for me. ' Lie on the sofa
there,* said she, — the ever kind and graceful, herself refusing
to do so, — ' there, but don't sleep ; * and I, after some super-
ficial objecting, did. In old years I used to lie that way, and
she would play the piano to me : a long series of Scotch tunes,
which set my mind finely wandering through the realms of
memory and romance, and effectually prevented sleep. That
evening I had lain but a few minutes, when she turned round
to her piano, got out the Thomson Bums book ; and, to my
surprise and joy, broke out again into her bright little stream
of harmony and poesy, silent for at least ten years before ; and
gave me, in soft tinkling beauty, pathos and melody, all my
old favourites: 'Banks and Braes,' Flowers of the Forest,'
' Gilderoy,' not forgetting * Duncan Gray,' * Cauld Kail,* ' Irish
Coolin,' or any of my favourites, tragic or comic ; all which
she did with modest neatness and completeness. 