294 THE LIFE OF PHILIP HENRY GOSSE. 



abundance. I remember that I was conscious of these 

 blunt traits in my grandmother, and conscious, too, of my 

 father's grave and unaltering attitude of respectful con- 

 sideration to her. But we were a solitary family. For 

 hours and hours, my grandmother would be sitting at her 

 patchwork, silent, in her padded chair ; my father, almost 

 motionless, in his study below her ; and I, equally silent, 

 though not equally still, free to wander whither I would in 

 house and garden, so that I disturbed none of the penates 

 of the cloister and the hearth. 



In the autumn of i860 a very happy and wholesome 

 change was made in the tenour of our existence. My 

 father became acquainted with a lady from the eastern 

 counties, who was staying at Torquay. This was Miss Eliza 

 Brightwen, whom he married at Frome, in Somerset, on 

 December 18 of that same year. This lady happily sur- 

 vives, and it would not be becoming for me to dwell here 

 on the circumstances which attended her married life. 

 But, when her eye reaches this page in the biography of 

 one so dear to us both, she will forgive me if I record, on 

 behalf of the dead, as on my own behalf, our deep sense 

 of gratitude, and our tender recognition of her tact and 

 gentleness and devotion through no less than thirty years. 

 It is of my step-mother, of that good genius of our house, 

 of whom I think every time I turn the pages of Adonais — 



" What softer voice is hushed over the dead ? 



Athwart what brow is that dark mantle thrown ? 

 ***** 



If it be she, who, gentlest of the wise, 



Taught, soothed, loved, honoured, the departed one ; 



Let me not vex with inharmonious sighs 



The silence of that heart's accepted sacrifice." 



The year 186 1 was the last in which my father retained 

 his old intellectual habits and interests unimpaired. There 



