LEAVES THEY HAVE TOtlCHED. 845 



particular feelings and delicacies which should be consulted : all this 

 may be done without the slightest violation of truth, or the most 

 trifling infringement of religion ; these are the sacrifices which repay 

 a man in the decline of life, for all that he has sacrificed in the com- 

 mencement of yours ; this makes a parent delight in his children, and 

 repose on them, when his mind and his body are perishing away, and 

 he is hastening on to the end of all things." " Consider," he continued, 

 "that he has been used to govern you; that (however you may have 

 forgotten it) the remembrance is fresh to him, of that hour when you 

 stood before him as a child, and he was to you as a God. Bear with 

 him in his old age; pain and sickness have made him what you see: 

 he has been galled by the injustice perhaps, and stung by the ingrati- 

 tude of men; let him not see that old age is coming upon him, that 

 his temper is impaired, or that his wisdom is diminished ; but, as the 

 infirmities of life double upon him., double you your kindness; make 

 him respectable to himself, soothe him, comfort him, honour your 

 father and your mother, that your days may be long, that you may 

 be justified by your own heart, and honoured by the children which 

 God giveth to you." Again, afterwards, he said : "It should be a 

 great incitement to the performance of this duty, that when the time 

 comes for repenting that we have neglected it, when the little per- 

 sonal feuds and jealousies which blind our understanding, are at an 

 end, and it becomes plain to the judge within the breast, that we 

 have often neglected the authors of our being, often given them. 

 unnecessary pain; — -when these feelings rush upon us, it too often hap- 

 pens that all reparation is impossible : they are gone ; the grave hides 

 them; and all that remains of father and mother are the dust and 

 ashes of their tombs. In all other injuries, the chances of repairing 

 them may endure as long as life itself, but it is the ordinary course 

 of nature, that the parent should perish before the child; and it is 

 the ordinary course of nature also, that rej)entance should be most 

 bitter when it is the most inefiectual." 



A visit to St. Paul's Cathedral in London, was rendered additionally 

 interesting down to so late a period as 1868, by yielding an oppoiiunity 

 of seeing, and perhaps hearing the voice of, the distinguished Henry 

 Hart Milman, the variously accomplished dean of that Cathedral, 

 author of the History of Latin Christianity, a narrative almost as 

 absorbing and as well sustained as Gibbon's. Dean Milman was 

 always ready to be courteously obliging to Canadians and Americans 

 generally, in their visits to London and St. Paul's. My MS. relic of 



