er surface covered with
green clover of the most vivid freshness. Not only all night, but all
day, has the dew lain upon its purity. With my eye attaining the
uppermost margin, where the waters shoot over, I look away into the
western sky, and discern there (what you least expect) a cow chewing her
cud with admirable composure, and higher up several sheep and lambs
browsing celestial buds. They stand on the eminence that forms the
background of my present view. The illusion is extremely picturesque,--
such as Allston himself would despair of producing. 'Who can paint like
Nature'?"

To a population like that of Lowell, the weekly respite from monotonous
in-door toil afforded by the first day of the week is particularly
grateful. Sabbath comes to the weary and overworked operative
emphatically as a day of rest. It opens upon him somewhat as it did
upon George Herbert, as he describes it in his exquisite little poem:--

"Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,
The bridal of the earth and sky!"

Apart from its soothing religious associations, it brings with it the
assurance of physical comfort and freedom. It is something to be able
to doze out the morning from daybreak to breakfast in that luxurious
state between sleeping and waking in which the mind eddies slowly and
peacefully round and round instead of rushing onward,--the future a
blank, the past annihilated, the present but a dim consciousness of
pleasurable existence. Then, too, the satisfaction is by no means
inconsiderable of throwing aside the worn and soiled habiliments of
labor and appearing in neat and comfortable attire. The moral influence
of dress has not been overrated even by Carlyle's Professor in his
Sartor Resartus. William Penn says that cleanliness is akin to
godliness. A well-dressed man, all other things being equal, is not
half as likely to compromise his character as one who approximates to
shabbiness. Lawrence Sterne used to say that when he felt himself
giving way to low spirits and a sense of depression and worthlessness,--
a sort of predisposition for all sorts of little meannesses,--he
forthwith shaved himself, brushed his wig, donned his best dress and his
gold rings, and thus put to flight the azure demons of his unfortunate
temperament. There is somehow a close affinity between moral purity and
clean linen; and the sprites of our daily temptation, who seem to find
easy access to us through a