I.

"Are you ready for your steeple-chase, Lorraine, Lorraine, Lorrèe?

Barum, Barum, Barum, Barum, Barum,
Barum, Baree.

You're booked to ride your capping race to-day at Coulterlee,

You're booked to ride Vindictive, for all the world to

see.

To keep him straight, and keep him first, and win the run for me.

Barum, Barum, &c.'

2.

"She clasped her new-born baby, poor Lorraine, Lorraine, Lorrée,

Barum, Barum, &c.

'I cannot ride Vindictive, as any man might see,

And I will not ride Vindictive, with this baby on my

knee;

He's killed a boy, he's killed a man, and why must he kill me?'

3.

"Unless you ride Vindictive, Lorraine, Lorraine, Lorrèe, Unless you ride Vindictive to-day at Coulterlee,

And land him safe across the brook, and win the blank

for me,

It's you may keep your baby, for you'll get no keep from me.'

1

4.

"That husbands could be cruel,' said Lorraine, Loraine, Lorée,

'That husbands could be cruel, I have known for seasons three;

But oh! to ride Vindictive while a baby cries for me,

And be killed across a fence at last for all the world to

see!'

5.

"She mastered young Vindictive-Oh! the gallant lass was she,

And kept him straight and won the race as near as near could be;

But he killed her at the brook against a pollard willow tree;

Oh! he killed her at the brook, the brute, for all the world to see.

And no one but the baby cried for poor Lorraine, Lorrèe."

CHAPTER XXVIII

1874-5.

AGED 55

RETURN FROM AMERICA-WORK AT EVERSLEY- -ILLNESS AT WESTMINSTER-NEW ANXIETY — LAST SERMONS IN THE ABBEY LEAVES THE CLOISTERS FOR EVER-LAST RETURN TO EVERSLEY - THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH-LAST ILLNESS AND DEPARTURE ANSWERED PRAYER HIS BURIAL-FUNERAL SERMONS-LETTERS OF SYMPATHY THE TRUE AND PERFECT KNIGHT— AT HIS GRAVE THE VICTORY OF LIFE OVER DEATH AND TIME.

"Death, beautiful, wise, kind Death, when will you come and tell me what I want to know?" C. K.

"Out of God's boundless bosom, the fount of life, we came; through selfish stormy youth, and contrite tears-just not too late; through manhood not altogether useless; through slow and chill old age, we return Whence we came, to the Bosom of God once more to go forth again with fresh knowledge and fresh powers, to nobler work. Amen." C. K.

IT

T was sultry August weather when he returned to Eversley from America, and his great joy at being at home again made him plunge too eagerly and suddenly into work and Sunday services, before he had regained his full strength after his illness in Colorado. There was much sickness and a great mortality in the parish; and he was out among his poor people twice and three times a day in the burning sun and dry easterly wind. When he went up to Westminster

in September, a severe attack of congestion of the liver came on, which alarmed his friends, and prevented his preaching in the Abbey on the first Sunday of his residence. This attack shook him terribly, and from that time he was unable to preach more than once a week during his residence; but, though altered and emaciated, he seemed recovering strength, when, early in October, a shadow came over his home, in the dangerous illness of his wife, touching him in his tenderest point, and filling him with fears for the future. When all immediate danger for her was over, it was with difficulty he was persuaded to leave her and take a few days' change of air and scene, at Lord John Thynne's, in Bedfordshire, and with his friend Mr. Fuller Maitland, in Essex. From these visits he returned invigorated in health and spirits for his November work, and got through his sermons in the Abbey with less fatigue. The congregations were enormous the sermons powerful as ever, though their preparation was an increasing labor: but the change in his appearance was observed by many. "I went back," said an old correspondent, "from the Abbey service, sad at the remembrance of the bent back and shrunken figure, and while hoping the weakness was but temporary, I grieved to see one who had carried himself so nobly, broken down by illness."

His All Saints' Day sermon will never be forgotten by those who heard it. It was like a note of preparation for the life of eternal blessedness in the vision of God upon which he himself was so soon to enter. It was a revealing too of his own deepest belief as to what that blessedness

meant, with back glances into the darker passages and bitter struggles of his own earthly life and warfare with evil. In it he speaks of the mystery of evil, and of the soul puzzled, crushed, and "sickened by the thought of the sins of the unholy many sickened, alas! by the imperfections of the holiest few."

"And have you never cried in your hearts with longing, almost with impatience, 'Surely, surely, there is an ideal Holy One somewhere or else, how could have arisen in my mind the conception, however faint, of an ideal holiness? But where? oh where? Not in the world around strewn with unholiness. Not in myself, unholy too, without and within—and calling myself sometimes the very worst company of all the bad company I meet, because that company is the only company from which I cannot escape. Oh! is there a Holy One, whom I may contemplate with utter delight? and if so, where is He? Oh that I might behold, if but for a moment, His perfect beauty, even though, as in the fable of Semele of old, the lightning of His glance were death. . . .'

―――

"

"And then, oh, then-has there not come to such a one - I know that it has come. that for which his spirit was athirst the very breath of pure air, the very gleam of pure light, the strain of very music pure for it is the very music of the spheres in those same words, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come;' and he has answered with a flush of keenest joy 'Yes, whatever else is unholy, there is a Holy One spotless and undefiled, serene and self-contained. Whatever else I cannot trust, there is One whom I can trust utterly. Whatever else I am dissatisfied with, there is One whom I can contemplate with utter satisfaction, and bathe my stained soul in that eternal fount of purity.