the
dust-bin, like poor human mortals in the grave, it will rest from all
its labours. It is impossible to estimate the benefit which such books
have conferred. How often have they loosed the chain of circumstances!
What unfamiliar tears--what unfamiliar laughter they have caused! What
chivalry and tenderness they have infused into rustic lovers! Of what
weary hours they have cheated and beguiled their readers! The big,
solemn history-books are in excellent preservation; the story-books are
defaced and frayed, and their out-of-elbows condition is their pride,
and the best justification of their existence.

In this pleasant summer weather I hold my audience in my garden rather
than in my house. In all my interviews the sun is a third party. Every
village has its Fool, and of course Dreamthorp is not without one. Him I
get to run my messages for me, and he occasionally turns my garden
borders with a neat hand enough. He and I hold frequent converse, and
people here, I have been told, think we have certain points of sympathy.
Although this is not meant for a compliment, I take it for one. The
poor, faithful creature's brain has strange visitors: now 'tis fun, now
wisdom, and now something which seems in the queerest way a compound of
both. He lives in a kind of twilight which observes objects, and his
remarks seem to come from another world than that in which ordinary
people live. He is the only original person of my acquaintance; his
views of life are his own, and form a singular commentary on those
generally accepted. He is dull enough at times, poor fellow; but anon he
startles you with something, and you think he must have wandered out of
Shakespeare's plays into this out-of-the-way place. Up from the village
now and then comes to visit me the tall, gaunt, atrabilious
confectioner, who has a hankering after Red-republicanism, and the
destruction of Queen, Lords, and Commons. Guy Fawkes is, I believe, the
only martyr in his calendar. The sourest-tempered man, I think, that
ever engaged in the manufacture of sweetmeats. I wonder that the oddity
of the thing never strikes himself. To be at all consistent, he should
put poison in his lozenges, and become the Herod of the village
innocents. One of his many eccentricities is a love for flowers, and he
visits me often to have a look at my greenhouse and my borders. I listen
to his truculent and revolutionary speeches, and take my revenge by
sending the gloomy egotist away wi