come wandering over these moors. My dame makes it a rule to give
to every son of Adam bread to eat, and supplies his wants to the next
house. But here are thousands of acres which might give them all meat,
and nobody to bid these poor Irish go to the moor and till it. They
burned the stacks, and so found a way to force the rich people to
attend to them."

We went out to walk over long hills, and looked at Criffel, then
without his cap, and down into Wordsworth's country. There we sat
down, and talked of the immortality of the soul. It was not Carlyle's
fault that we talked on that topic, for he had the natural
disinclination of every nimble spirit to bruise itself against walls,
and did not like to place himself where no step can be taken. But he
was honest and true, and cognizant of the subtile links that bind ages
together, and saw how every event affects all the future. "Christ died
on the tree: that built Dunscore kirk yonder: that brought you and me
together. Time had only a relative existence."

He was already turning his eyes toward London with a scholar's
appreciation. London is the heart of the world, he said, wonderful
only from the mass of human beings. He liked the huge machine. Each
keeps its own round. The baker's boy brings muffins to the window at a
fixt hour every day, and that is all the Londoner knows or wishes to
know on the subject. But it turned out good men. He named certain
individuals, especially one man of letters, his friend, the best mind
he knew, whom London had well served.

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

Born in Salem, Mass., in 1804; died in 1864; graduated from
Bowdoin College in 1825; served in the Custom House in
Boston; joined the Brook Farm community in 1841; surveyor of
the port of Salem in 1846-49; consul at Liverpool in
1853-57; published "Fanshawe" at his own expense in 1826,
"Twice Told Tales" in 1837-42; "Mosses from an Old Manse" in
1846, "The Scarlet Letter" in 1850, "House of the Seven
Gables" in 1851, "The Marble Faun" in 1860, "Our Old Home"
in 1863.

I

OCCUPANTS OF AN OLD MANSE[74]

Between two tall gate-posts of rough-hewn stone (the gate itself
having fallen from its hinges at some unknown epoch) we beheld the
gray front of the old parsonage terminating the vista of an avenue of
black-ash trees. It was now a twelvemonth since the funeral procession
of the venerable clergyman, its last inhabitant, had turned fr