r grows more mellow and profound; I cannot with a
stroke present the teeming hills, flushed with their weight of corn, that
now stands stately in the suspended air--now, touched by the lightest wind
that ever blew, flows like a golden river. As difficult is it to convey a
just impression of a peaceful spot, whose praise consists--so to
speak--rather in privatives than positives; whose privilege it is to be
still free, tranquil, and unmolested, in a land and in an age of ceaseless
agitation, in which the rigorous virtues of our fathers are forgotten, and
the land's integrity threatens to give way. If Ellendale be not the most
populous and active village, it is certainly the most rustic and winning
that I have ever beheld in our once _merry_ England. It is secreted from
the world, and lies snugly and closely at the foot of massive hills, which
nature seems to have erected solely for its covert and protection. It is
situated about four miles from the high-road, whence you obtain at
intervals short glimpses as it rears its tiny head into the open day. If
the traveller be fresh from an overworked and overworking city, he looks
upon what he deems a sheer impossibility--the residence of men living
cheerfully and happily in solitude intense. The employment of the
villagers is in the silent fields, from day to day, from year to year.
Their life has no variety, the general heart has no desire for change. It
was so with their fathers--so shall it be with their own children, if the
too selfish world will let them. The inhabitants are almost to a man poor,
humble, and contented. The cottages are clean and neat, but lowly, like
the owners. One house, and one alone, is distinguished from the rest; it
is aged, and ivy as venerable as itself clings closer there as years roll
over it. It has a lawn, an antique door and porch, narrow windows with the
smallest diamond panes, and has been called since its first stone was laid,
_the Vicarage_. Forget the village, courteous reader, and cross with me
the hospitable threshold, for here our history begins--and ends.

The season is summer--the time evening--the hour that of sunset. The big
sun goes down like a ball of fire, crimson-red, leaving at the horizon's
verge his splendid escort--a host of clouds glittering with a hundred hues,
the gorgeous livery of him they have attended. A borrowed glory steals
from them into an open casement, and, passing over, illumines for a time a
face pale even to s