hand; and yet the operations of art which produce the effect are scarcely to be perceived. 11. The cherishing and training of some trees; the cautious pruning of others; the nice distribution of flowers and plants of tender and graceful foliage; the introduction of a green slope of velvet turf; the partial opening to a peep of blue distance, or silver gleam of water; all these are managed with a delicate tact, a prevailing, yet quiet assiduity, like the magic touches with which a painter finishes a favorite picture. 12. The residence of people of fortune and refinement in the country has diffused a degree of taste and elegance in rural economy that descends to the lowest class. The very laborer, with his thatched cottage and narrow slip of ground, attends to their embellishment. The trim hedge, the grass-plot before the door, the little flowerbed bordered with snug box, the woodbine trained up against the wall and hanging its blossoms about the lattice, the pot of flowers in the window, the holly providentially planted about the house to cheat the winter of its dreariness and throw in a semblance of green summer to cheer the fireside, — all these bespeak the influence of taste, flowing down from high sources, and pervading the lowest levels of the public mind. If ever Love, as poets sing, delights to visit a cottage, it must be the cottage of an English peasant. 13. Fondness for rural life among the higher classes of the English has had a great and salutary effect upon the national character. I do not know a finer race of men than the English gentlemen. Instead of the softness and effeminacy which characterize the men of rank in most countries, they exhibit a union of elegance and strength, a robustness of frame and freshness of complexion, which I am inclined to attribute to their living so much in the open air, and pursuing, eagerly, the invigorating recreations of the country. 14. These hardy exercises produce also a healthy tone of mind and spirits, and a manliness and simplicity of manners, which even the follies and dissipations of the town cannot easily pervert, and can never entirely destroy. In the country, too, the different orders of society. seem to approach more freely, to be more disposed to blend, and operate favorably upon each other. The distinctions between them do not seem to be so marked and impassable as in the cities. 15. The manner in which property has been distributed into small, estates and farms, has established a regular gradation from the nobleman, through the classes of gentry, small landed proprietors, and substantial farmers, down to the laboring peasantry; and, while it has thus banded the extremes of society together, it has infused into each intermediate rank a spirit of independence. 16. This, it must be acknowledged, is not so universally the case, at present, as it was formerly: the large estates having, in years of distress, absorbed the smaller, and in some parts of the country almost annihilated the sturdy race of small farmers. These, however, I believe, are but casual breaks in the general system I have mentioned. Washington Irving. XCII. TOM BROWN AT THE MASTER'S TOMB. ALL that was left, on earth, of him whom we had honored, was lying, cold and still, under the chapel floor. He would go in and see the place once more, and then leave it forever. New men and new methods might do for other people; let those who would, worship the rising star; he, at least, would be faithful to the sun which had set. He rose, and walked to the chapel door and unlocked it, fancying himself the only mourner in all the broad land, and feeding on his own selfish sorrow. 2. He passed through the vestibule, and then paused for a moment to glance over the empty benches. His heart was still proud and high, and he walked up to the seat which he had last occupied as a sixth-form boy, and seated himself to collect his thoughts. Truth to tell, they needed collecting and setting in order not a little. The memories of eight years were all dancing through his brain, and carrying him about whither they would; while, beneath them all, his heart was throbbing with the dull sense of a loss that could never be made up to him. 3. The rays of the evening sun came solemnly through the painted windows above his head, and fell in gorgeous colors on the opposite wall, and the perfect stillness soothed his spirit by little and little. He turned to the pulpit, and looked at it, and then, leaning forward, with his head on his hands, groaned aloud: "If I could only have seen the Doctor again for one five minutes, to have told him all that was in my heart, what I owed to him, how I loved and reverenced him, and how I would, by God's help, follow his steps in life and death, I could have borne it all without a murmur. 66 4. "But that he should have gone away without knowing it all, is too much to bear. But am I sure that he does not know it all?"- the thought made him startMay he not even now be near me, in this very chapel ? If he be, am I sorrowing as he would have me sorrow as I shall wish to have sorrowed, when I shall meet him again?" 5. He raised himself and looked around; and, after a minute, rose and walked humbly down to the lowest bench, and sat on the very seat which he had occupied on his first Sunday at Rugby. Then, the old memories . rushed back again, but softened and subdued, soothing him as he let himself be carried away by them. 6. He looked up at the great painted window above the altar, and remembered how, when a little boy, he used to try not to look through it at the elm trees and the rocks, before the painted glass came-and the subscription for the painted glass, and the letter he wrote home for money to give to it. And there, down below, sat on his right hand on that first day, scratched rudely in the oak paneling. was the name of the boy who 7. Then came the thought of all his old school-fellows; and form after form of boys, nobler, and braver, and purer than he, rose, and seemed to rebuke him. Could he not think of them, and what they had felt and were feeling; they who had honored and loved from the first the man whom he had taken years to know and love? Could he not think of those yet dearer to him who was gone, who bore his name and shared his blood, and were now without a husband or a father? 8. Then the grief which he began to share with others became gentle and holy, and he rose once more, and walked up the steps to the altar; and, while the tears flowed freely down his cheeks, kneeled humbly and hopefully to lay there his share of a burden which had proved itself too heavy for him to bear in his own strength. 9. Here let us leave him where better could we leave him, than at the altar, before which he had first caught a glimpse of the glory of his birthright, and felt the drawing of the bond which links all living souls together in one brotherhood — at the grave, beneath the altar, of him who had opened his eyes to see that glory, and softened his heart, till it could feel that bond? Thomas Hughes. XCIII. BABIE BELL. HAVE you not heard the poets tell How came the dainty Babie Bell Into this world of ours? The gates of Heaven were left ajar: She saw this planet, like a star, Hung in the purple depths of even- those feet, They fell like dew upon the flowers, 2. She came, and brought delicious May.— Like sunlight, in and out the leaves, The lily swung its noiseless bell, And, o'er the porch, the trembling vine How sweetly, softly, twilight fell! And happy spring-tide flowers, When the dainty Babie Bell Came to this world of ours! 3. O Babie, dainty Babie Bell, How fair she grew from day to day! What woman nature filled her eyes, What poetry within them lay! Those deep and tender twilight eyes, |