discover; there also were strewn various little
masterpieces of female ingenuity, in which the fairy fingers of Lucy
Brandon were especially formed to excel. The shades of evening were
rapidly darkening over the empty streets; and in the sky, which was
cloudless and transparently clear, the stars came gradually out one by
one, until,--

"As water does a sponge, so their soft light
Filled the void, hollow, universal air."

Beautiful evening! (if we, as well as Augustus Tomlinson, may indulge in
an apostrophe)--beautiful evening! For thee all poets have had a song,
and surrounded thee with rills and waterfalls and dews and flowers and
sheep and bats and melancholy and owls; yet we must confess that to us,
who in this very sentimental age are a bustling, worldly, hard-minded
person, jostling our neighbours, and thinking of the main chance,--to us
thou art never so charming as when we meet thee walking in thy gray hood
through the emptying streets and among the dying sounds of a city. We
love to feel the stillness where all, two hours back, was clamour.
We love to see the dingy abodes of Trade and Luxury--those restless
patients of earth's constant fever--contrasted and canopied by a heaven
full of purity and quietness and peace. We love to fill our thought with
speculations on man, even though the man be the muffin-man, rather than
with inanimate objects,--hills and streams,--things to dream about, not
to meditate on. Man is the subject of far nobler contemplation, of far
more glowing hope, of a far purer and loftier vein of sentiment, than
all the "floods and fells" in the universe; and that, sweet evening!
is one reason why we like that the earnest and tender thoughts thou
excitest within us should be rather surrounded by the labours and tokens
of our species than by sheep and bats and melancholy and owls. But
whether, most blessed evening! thou delightest us in the country or in
the town, thou equally disposest us to make and to feel love! Thou art
the cause of more marriages and more divorces than any other time in the
twenty-four hours! Eyes that were common eyes to us before, touched by
thy enchanting and magic shadows, become inspired, and preach to us of
heaven. A softness settles on features that were harsh to us while the
sun shone; a mellow "light of love" reposes on the complexion which by
day we would have steeped "full fathom five" in a sea of Mrs. Gowland's
lotion. What, then,