G OF TWO LOVERS AFTER LONG ABSENCE AND MUCH SORROW.--CONCLUSION.

EUGENE ARAM

BOOK I.

CHAPTER I.

THE VILLAGE.--ITS INHABITANTS.--AN OLD MANORHOUSE: AND AN ENGLISH
FAMILY; THEIR HISTORY, INVOLVING A MYSTERIOUS EVENT.

"Protected by the divinity they adored, supported by the earth which
they cultivated, and at peace with themselves, they enjoyed the sweets
of life, without dreading or desiring dissolution." Numa Pompilius.

In the country of--there is a sequestered hamlet, which I have often
sought occasion to pass, and which I have never left without a certain
reluctance and regret. It is not only (though this has a remarkable
spell over my imagination) that it is the sanctuary, as it were, of a
story which appears to me of a singular and fearful interest; but the
scene itself is one which requires no legend to arrest the traveller's
attention. I know not in any part of the world, which it has been my lot
to visit, a landscape so entirely lovely and picturesque, as that which
on every side of the village I speak of, you may survey. The hamlet to
which I shall here give the name of Grassdale, is situated in a valley,
which for about the length of a mile winds among gardens and orchards,
laden with fruit, between two chains of gentle and fertile hills.

Here, singly or in pairs, are scattered cottages, which bespeak a
comfort and a rural luxury, less often than our poets have described
the characteristics of the English peasantry. It has been observed,
and there is a world of homely, ay, and of legislative knowledge in the
observation, that wherever you see a flower in a cottage garden, or a
bird-cage at the window, you may feel sure that the cottagers are better
and wiser than their neighbours; and such humble tokens of attention to
something beyond the sterile labour of life, were (we must now revert
to the past,) to be remarked in almost every one of the lowly abodes
at Grassdale. The jasmine here, there the vine clustered over the
threshold, not so wildly as to testify negligence; but rather to sweeten
the air than to exclude it from the inmates. Each of the cottages
possessed at its rear its plot of ground, apportioned to the more useful
and nutritious product of nature; while the greater part of them fenced
also from the unfrequented road a little spot for the lupin, the sweet
pea, or the many tribes of the English rose. And it is not unworthy of
remark, that the bees came in greater clu