some time
quietly in the lazy ease of a dull country-life? Have you ever become
gradually accustomed to its monotony, and inured to its solitude; and,
just at the time when you have half-forgotten the great world--that mare
magnum that frets and roars in the distance--have you ever received in
your calm retreat some visitor, full of the busy and excited life which
you imagined yourself contented to relinquish? If so, have you not
perceived, that, in proportion as his presence and communication either
revived old memories, or brought before you new pictures of "the bright
tumult" of that existence of which your guest made a part,--you began to
compare him curiously with yourself; you began to feel that what
before was to rest is now to rot; that your years are gliding from
you unenjoyed and wasted; that the contrast between the animal life of
passionate civilisation and the vegetable torpor of motionless seclusion
is one that, if you are still young, it tasks your philosophy to
bear,--feeling all the while that the torpor may be yours to your grave?
And when your guest has left you, when you are again alone, is the
solitude the same as it was before?

Our poor Caleb had for years rooted his thoughts to his village. His
guest had been like the Bird in the Fairy Tale, settling upon the quiet
branches, and singing so loudly and so gladly of the enchanted skies
afar, that, when it flew away, the tree pined, nipped and withering in
the sober sun in which before it had basked contented. The guest was,
indeed, one of those men whose animal spirits exercise upon such as come
within their circle the influence and power usually ascribed only to
intellectual qualities. During the month he had sojourned with Caleb,
he had brought back to the poor parson all the gaiety of the brisk and
noisy novitiate that preceded the solemn vow and the dull retreat;--the
social parties, the merry suppers, the open-handed, open-hearted
fellowship of riotous, delightful, extravagant, thoughtless YOUTH. And
Caleb was not a bookman--not a scholar; he had no resources in himself,
no occupation but his indolent and ill-paid duties. The emotions,
therefore, of the Active Man were easily aroused within him. But if this
comparison between his past and present life rendered him restless
and disturbed, how much more deeply and lastingly was he affected by
a contrast between his own future and that of his friend! Not in those
points where he could never hope