s and cowslips. Nobody else but my
friend Moss could have written that description."

SQUIRE.--"I don't know; there's a simile about the waste of corn-seed in
hand-sowing, which makes me think he must be a farmer!"

MRS. DALE (scornfully).--"A farmer! In hobnailed shoes, I suppose! I say
it is a woman."

MRS. HAZELDEAN.--"A WOMAN, and A MOTHER!"

PARSON.--"A middle-aged man, and a naturalist."

SQUIRE.--"No, no, Parson, certainly a young man; for that love-scene
puts me in mind of my own young days, when I would have given my ears
to tell Harry how handsome I thought her; and all I could say was, 'Fine
weather for the crops, Miss.' Yes, a young man and a farmer. I should
not wonder if he had held the plough himself."

RANDAL (who had been turning over the pages).--"This sketch of Night in
London comes from a man who has lived the life of cities and looked at
wealth with the eyes of poverty. Not bad! I will read the book."

"Strange," said the parson, smiling, "that this little work should so
have entered into our minds, suggested to all of us different ideas, yet
equally charmed all,--given a new and fresh current to our dull country
life, animated us as with the sight of a world in our breasts we had
never seen before save in dreams: a little work like this by a man we
don't know and never may! Well, that knowledge is power, and a noble
one!"

"A sort of power, certainly, sir," said Randal, candidly; and that
night, when Randal retired to his own room, he suspended his schemes and
projects, and read, as he rarely did, without an object to gain by the
reading.

The work surprised him by the pleasure it gave. Its charm lay in the
writer's calm enjoyment of the beautiful. It seemed like some happy
soul sunning itself in the light of its own thoughts. Its power was so
tranquil and even, that it was only a critic who could perceive how much
force and vigour were necessary to sustain the wing that floated aloft
with so imperceptible an effort. There was no one faculty predominating
tyrannically over the others; all seemed proportioned in the felicitous
symmetry of a nature rounded, integral, and complete. And when the work
was closed, it left behind it a tender warmth that played round the
heart of the reader and vivified feelings which seemed unknown before.
Randal laid down the book softly; and for five minutes the ignoble and
base purposes to which his own knowledge was applied stood before him,
naked and unmas