conscious as that of a three-year old child.

"If she does not think, why should I tell her?" said Dame Elsie, as she
turned to go into the house, and left the child sitting on the mossy
parapet that overlooked the gorge. Thence she could see far off, not
only down the dim, sombre abyss, but out to the blue Mediterranean
beyond, now calmly lying in swathing-bands of purple, gold, and orange,
while the smoky cloud that overhung Vesuvius became silver and rose in
the evening light.

There is always something of elevation and parity that seems to come
over one from being in an elevated region. One feels morally as well as
physically above the world, and from that clearer air able to look down
on it calmly with disengaged freedom. Our little maiden, sat for a few
moments gazing, her large brown eyes dilating with a tremulous lustre,
as if tears were half of a mind to start in them, and her lips apart
with a delicate earnestness, like one who is pursuing some pleasing
inner thought. Suddenly rousing herself, she began by breaking the
freshest orange-blossoms from the golden-fruited trees, and, kissing and
pressing them to her bosom, she proceeded to remove the faded flowers of
the morning from before a little rude shrine in the rock, where, in a
sculptured niche, was a picture of the Madonna and Child, with a locked
glass door in front of it. The picture was a happy transcript of one of
the fairest creations of the religious school of Florence, done by one
of those rustic copyists of whom Italy is full, who appear to possess
the instinct of painting, and to whom we owe many of those sweet
faces which sometimes look down on us by the way-side from rudest and
homeliest shrines.

The poor fellow by whom it had been painted was one to whom years before
Dame Elsie had given food and shelter for many months during a lingering
illness; and he had painted so much of his dying heart and hopes into it
that it had a peculiar and vital vividness in its power of affecting the
feelings. Agnes had been familiar with this picture from early infancy.
No day of her life had the flowers failed to be freshly placed before
it. It had seemed to smile down sympathy on her childish joys, and to
cloud over with her childish sorrows. It was less a picture to her than
a presence; and the whole air of the little orange-garden seemed to be
made sacred by it. When she had arranged her flowers, she kneeled down
and began to say prayers for the soul of t