ishness and ambition of busy life. To them, the fresh
breezes of morning, as they rustled through the living foliage, and
stirred the modest flowers of their pleasant path, were fraught with an
enjoyment which bound their hearts to every object around them,
because to each of them these objects were the sources of habitual
gratification. On them the dewy stillness of evening descended with
tender serenity, as the valley shone in the radiance of the sinking sun;
and by them was held that sweet and rapturous communion with nature,
which, as it springs earliest in the affections so does it linger about
the heart when all the other loves and enmities of life are forgotten.
Who is there, indeed, whose spirit does not tremble with tenderness, on
looking back upon the scenes of his early life? And, alas! alas! how few
are there of those that are long conversant with the world, who can take
such a retrospect without feeling their hearts weighed down by sorrow,
and the force of associations too mournful to be uttered in words.
The bitter consciousness that we can be youthful no more, and that
the golden hours of our innocence have passed away for ever, throws a
melancholy darkness over the soul, and sends it back again to retrace,
in the imaginary light of our early time, the scenes where that
innocence had been our playmate. Let no man deny that groves, and
meadows, and green fields, and winding streams, and all the other charms
of rural imagery, unconsciously but surely give to the human heart a
deep perception of that graceful creed which is beautifully termed
the religion of nature. They give purity and strength to feeling,
and through the imagination, which owes so much of its power to their
impressions, they raise our sentiments until we feel them kindled into
union with the lustre of a holier light than even that which leads our
steps to God through the beauty of his own works. For this reason it is,
that all imaginative affections are much stronger in the country than in
the town. Love in the one place is not only freer from the coarseness
of passion, but incomparably more seductive to the heart, and more
voluptuous in its conception of the ideal beauty with which it invests
the object of its attachment. Nor is this surprising. In the country
its various associations are essentially impressive and poetical.
Moonlight--evening--the still glen--the river side--the flowery
hawthorn--the bower--the crystal well--not forgetting