exertions having been as it was supposed succeeded by a stroke,) sinking
almost immediately into a state nearly childish, during which, however,
it was a very great delight to Tamar, to perceive in the very midst of
this intellectual ruin an awakening to things spiritual; so that it
would seem, as if the things hidden from him in the days of human
prudence and wisdom, were now made manifest to him, in the period of
almost second childishness.
Tamar had been enabled to imbibe the purest Christian principles, in
her early youth, for which, humanly speaking, she owed much to Shanty,
and she now with the assistance of the kind old man, laboured
incessantly, to bring her father to the Messiah of the Christians, as
the only hope and rest of his soul; and she had reason before her father
died, to hope that her labours had not been without fruit. As to worldly
pelf, she had it in rich abundance, but she could have little personal
enjoyment of it whilst shut up with her aged father in Dymock's Tower,
yet she had exquisite delight in humouring therewith, the fancies of
Dymock, and administering to the more sober and benevolent plans of Mrs.
Margaret; for this lady's principal delight was, to assist the needy,
and her only earthly or worldly caprice, that of restoring the Tower and
its environs, and furnishing, to what she conceived had been its state,
in the, perhaps, imaginary days of the exaltation of the Dymocks.
A splendid feast in the halls of Dymock's Tower, is also spoken of, as
having taken place, soon after the return of the Laird from London, from
which, not a creature dwelling on the moor was absent, when Salmon
directed Tamar to reward those persons who had assisted him in his
greatest need, and when Mrs. Margaret added numbers of coats and
garments to those that were destitute. Dymock in his joy of heart,
caused the plough to be brought forward, and fixed upon a table in the
hall, for every one to see that day, Mrs. Margaret having been obliged
to acknowledge, that it was this same plough, which had turned up the
vein of gold, in which all present were rejoicing.
With the notice of this feast the history terminates, and here the
writer concludes with a single sentiment,--that although a work of
kindness wrought in the fear of God, as imparted by the Lord, the
Spirit--seldom produces such a manifest reward, as it did in the case
of Mrs. Margaret and her nephew, for the race is not always to the
swift, nor the burthen to the strong, yet, even under this present
imperfect dispensation, there is a peace above all price, accompanying
every act, which draws a creature out of self, to administer to the
necessities of others, whenever these acts are performed in faith, and
with a continual reference to the pleasure of God, and without view to
heaping up merits, which is a principle entirely adverse to anything
like a correct knowledge of salvation by the Lord the Saviour.