ed a classical regularity, but
that soul of benevolence transpired through, and was bound up with them,
that had a marble bust fitly representing them been handed down to
posterity from some master-hand of antiquity, we should have reverenced
it with awe as something beyond human nature, and gazed on it at the
same time with love, as being so dearly and sweetly human. These are
not the words of enthusiasm, but a mere narrative of fact. He wore his
own white and thin hair, that was indeed so thin, that the top of his
head was quite bald. A snuff-coloured coat, cut in the olden fashion,
knee-breeches, white lamb's-wool stockings, and shoes of rather high
quarters, gave a little of the primitive to his highly respectable
appearance.

I first saw him as he was pretending to angle in the river that runs
through the village. Immediately I had gazed upon his benignant
countenance, I went and sat down by him. I could not help it. At once
I understood the urbanity and the gentlemanliness that must have existed
in the patriarchal times. There was no need of forms between us. He
made room for me as a son, and I looked up to him as to a father. He
smiled upon me so encouragingly, and so confidently, that I found myself
resting my arm upon his knee, with all the loving familiarity of
long-tried affection. From that first moment of meeting until his heart
lay cold in the grave--and cold the grave alone could make it--a
singular, unswerving, and, on my part, an absorbing love was between us.
We remained for a space in this caressing position, in silence; my eyes
now drinking in the rich hues of the evening, now the mental expression
of the "good old man." "Oh! it is very beautiful," said I, thinking as
much of his mild face as of the gorgeousness of the sky above me.

"And do you _feel it_?" said he. "Yes, I see you do; by your glistening
eyes and heightened colour."

"I feel very happy," I replied; "and have just now two very, very
strange wishes, and I don't know which I wish for most."

"What are they, my little friend?"

"O! you will laugh at me so if I tell you."

"No, I will not, indeed. I never laugh at anybody."

"Ah, I was almost sure of that. Well, I was wishing when I looked up
into the sky, that I could fly through and through those beautiful
clouds like an eagle; and when I looked at you, I wished that I were
just such a good-natured old gentleman."

"Come, come, there is more flattery than good sen