in
who is carried to her last home. Let every head be reverently uncovered
while the psalm enters the gate, and the bier is borne for holy rites
along the chancel of the church, and laid down close to the altar. A
smothered sobbing disturbeth not the service--'tis a human spirit
breathing in accordance with the divine. Mortals weeping for the
immortal--Earth's passions cleaving to one who is now in heaven.

Was she one flower of many, and singled out by death's unsparing finger
from a wreath of beauty, whose remaining blossoms seem now to have lost
all their fragrance and all their brightness? Or was she the sole
delight of her greyhaired parents' eyes, and is the voice of joy
extinguished in their low-roofed home for ever? Had her loveliness been
beloved, and had her innocent hopes anticipated the bridal-day, nor her
heart, whose beatings were numbered, ever feared that narrow bed? All
that we know is her name and age--you see them glittering on her
coffin--"Anabella Irvine, aged xix years"!

The day seems something dim, now that we are all on our way back to
Ambleside; and although the clouds are neither heavier nor more numerous
than before, somehow or other the sun is a little obscured. We must not
indulge too long in a mournful mood--yet let us all sit down under the
shadow of this grove of sycamores, overshadowing this reedy bay of
Rydal-mere, and listen to a Tale of Tears.

Many a tame tradition, embalmed in a few pathetic verses, lives for
ages, while the memory of the most affecting incidents, to which genius
has allied no general emotion, fades like the mist, and leaves
heart-rending griefs undeplored. Elegies and dirges might indeed have
well been sung amidst the green ruins of yonder Cottage, that looks now
almost like a fallen wall--at best, the remnants of a cattle-shed shaken
down by the storm.

Thirty years ago--how short a time in national history--how long in that
of private sorrows!--all tongues were speaking of the death that there
befell; and to have seen the weeping, you would have thought that the
funeral could never have been forgotten. But stop now the shepherd on
the hill, and ask him who lived in that nook, and chance is he knows not
even their name, much less the story of their afflictions. It was
inhabited by Allan Fleming, his wife, and an only child, known
familiarly in her own small world by the name of LUCY OF THE FOLD. In
almost every district among the mountains, there is its pecul