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 he had loved. It was a bitter trial to him, and he solaced himself in his own way by pouring out his heart in the verses—

concluding with the lines so conscious of daily increasing sadness, so hopeless of the present and the future—

And now, though he had a house to live in, concerning the rent of which he need be under no anxiety, and a pension of £45 a year, yet with a wife and children, and laden with debt, he could not keep his head above water. Poverty came on like an armed man, and what rendered it worse to bear than before was that the friends who had surrounded him from a child could not know. So he sank deeper and deeper into distress of mind and body. One day in the winter following he went out, having left his children almost starving. The time passed on, and he did not return. His little girl was sent to look for him. She found him lying insensible by the river-side. They dragged him home, got him to bed, and there he lay a poor invalid until the spring-time came again. Then he sat up once more in his chair and looked at his books. His wife would have him go out. She had known of old—

But Nature-medicine would do no longer; he was conscious of it, and refused to go. It was not merely physical disease, it was not entirely mental; it was something deeper still,—his spirit was wounded. He had tasted the bitter cup the world had to give, and he found it wormwood and gall. The beautiful unknown land had