there is a reflection of clerical importance about them since
their connection with the Church, which is quite edifying--a decorum,
a gravity, a solemn politeness. Oh, to see the worthy wheeler carry the
gown after his lodger on a Sunday, nicely pinned up in his wife's best
handkerchief!--or to hear him rebuke a squalling child or a squabbling
woman! The curate is nothing to him. He is fit to be perpetual
churchwarden.

We must now cross the lane into the shady rope-walk. That pretty white
cottage opposite, which stands straggling at the end of the village in
a garden full of flowers, belongs to our mason, the shortest of men,
and his handsome, tall wife: he, a dwarf, with the voice of a giant; one
starts when he begins to talk as if he were shouting through a speaking
trumpet; she, the sister, daughter, and grand-daughter, of a long line
of gardeners, and no contemptible one herself. It is very magnanimous in
me not to hate her; for she beats me in my own way, in chrysanthemums,
and dahlias, and the like gauds. Her plants are sure to live; mine have
a sad trick of dying, perhaps because I love them, 'not wisely, but too
well,' and kill them with over-kindness. Half-way up the hill is another
detached cottage, the residence of an officer, and his beautiful family.
That eldest boy, who is hanging over the gate, and looking with such
intense childish admiration at my Lizzy, might be a model for a Cupid.

How pleasantly the road winds up the hill, with its broad green borders
and hedgerows so thickly timbered! How finely the evening sun falls on
that sandy excavated bank, and touches the farmhouse on the top of the
eminence! and how clearly defined and relieved is the figure of the
man who is just coming down! It is poor John Evans, the gardener--an
excellent gardener till about ten years ago, when he lost his wife, and
became insane. He was sent to St. Luke's, and dismissed as cured; but
his power was gone and his strength; he could no longer manage a garden,
nor submit to the restraint, nor encounter the fatigue of regular
employment: so he retreated to the workhouse, the pensioner and factotum
of the village, amongst whom he divides his services. His mind often
wanders, intent on some fantastic and impracticable plan, and lost to
present objects; but he is perfectly harmless, and full of a childlike
simplicity, a smiling contentedness, a most touching gratitude. Every
one is kind to John Evans, for there is that about