CHAPTER XI.
"Fly these soft scenes! E'en now with playful art
Love wreaths the flowery ways with fatal snare."
Beattie.
Apathy of character, and an indifference to the common concerns of life moving around him, had for some time lessened in Philimore his wonted energies and desires of rendering himself useful in his ministry. He had long breathed a close and condensed atmosphere, but being suddenly transported to one more pure and clear, he found his drooping spirits revive.
Those effects, of which he was sensible, perhaps proceeded from another cause still stronger, but which he was as yet unwilling either to acknowledge or scrutinize.
His future destiny seemed to be involved in a mysterious spell, which he feared to penetrate, and which seemed to link his ideas in a pleasing connexion with The Bower. "That spot," thought he, "is surely consecrated to purer and more elevated joys than those which usually fall to the lot of erring man. Beings of a superior order are
