are, amidst the multitude that cover the earth, who have not their hours of solitary contemplation too.

It was in this cast of thought, in which the heart is made sad for want of communion with some living thing, when the tasteless character of what surrounds us hurries the mind forward to the excitement of hope or carries it back to dwell for a time amidst the softened but deep feelings of the past, that the fresh and thoughtless joys and the pure and warm affections of my boyhood came over me like a dream, and the cares of years, and the solemn and darkening scene about me, gave way, and I stood in the midst of the green and sunshine of a child. I felt again the wrinkled cheek over which my baby hand had a thousand times passed in fondness, entered into all the plays of children, and then remembered the quaint customs, the individualities of the age of strong character and warm feeling, which marked the times of our fathers, when the old sometimes mingled with the young, and the young bowed in reverence to the old. That was the age of feeling. Would that this over-wise age had something of its childlike simplicity, something of its rough and honest manliness, which dared at times to be a boy. But the age has changed; and those amusements in which we were all children together, and which made the heart better without weakening the understanding, are at an end.

There are no April-Fool-Day's tricks in this period of decorum, no "merry Christmas," no "happy NewYear." I feel the blood move quick again at the recollection of the glad faces I once used to see, when every body was running to wish you "happy NewYear." I can remember when, hurrying from my chamber, with my fingers too stiff and cold to button

my little jacket, I burst open the parlour door, that I might be the first to "wish." Though, on this morning, I was sure to be up an hour earlier than usual, I always found the family standing round the newmade crackling fire, ready to break out upon me in full voices with the old greeting. There was something restoring in it, which made me feel as if we had all awaked in a new world, and to another existence; and a vague, but grateful sensation, that new and peculiar joys were in store for us, went warm and quickening to the heart. I was filled with kindness; and eager as I had been but a moment before to surprise every one in the house, the laugh of good-natured triumph at my defeat made it dearer to me than a victory.

come new.

But old things are passed away; all things are beNot only those customs, which now and then met us in our dull travel over the road of life, are gone; even the seasons seem changing. We no longer gather flowers on May-Day; and our last New-Year's morning, instead of rising upon the crusted snow and fields glittering with ice, spread itself with a sleepy dankness over the naked earth. I awoke with an illforeboding languor upon me, and with a weighed-down heart sauntered into the silent parlour. The brands had fallen over the hearth, and by their half-extinguished heat seemed to doubt their welcome. I knew not where to sit or stand; the fireside looked cheerless, and there was an uncomfortable, ill-natured chill at the window. The vapour was passing off from the withered grass; the freshness of every thing about me appeared deadened, and the beauty of nature faded. In the midst of this dull decay and solitude, a sense of desertion overshadowed me. The world's inhabitants were as strangers, and even the objects of nature, with

which I was wont to hold discourse, seemed to shut me out from communion with them. The family at last came in, one after another. I was about wishing them the New-Year's blessing; but the memory of the heartfelt sprightfulness of old times came across my mind, and brought along with it those that were at rest in the grave. I gave a loud "Hem!" (for my throat was full,) and bade a cold "Good morning." I would not have uttered the old wish if I could have done it; there was a feeling of proud resentment at the neglect of ancient customs which forbade it. I did not care to wipe off the dust, which is fast and silently gathering over them, to bring them forward to the ridicule of the affected refinement and cold rationality of this enlightened age. They would as ill sort with our modern laboured artificiality of manners, as our grandmother's comfortable arm-chair and worked cushion in a fashionable drawing-room with distressingly slender fancy-chairs, and settees, on which ladies crowd. and elbow one another. No, these good-natured and homely observances are passed away, and I have a sacred attachment for their memory, which, like that for a departed friend, forbids mention of them to strangers.

Amidst this neglect and decay of old customs and characters, when every thing is brought to a wearisome level, and all is varnish and polish, so that even the roughness upon the plum is held to be disgusting, when the utterance of strong feeling is ill-breeding, and dissimulation wisdom, it is well for the world that there are beings not mindless of the past, who live with ages long gone by, and look upon the characters of the present time as light and artificial, who bring back and keep alive amongst us something of the wild and unpruned beauties of the earth, the ardent and spon

taneous movements of man; so that the forest and rock, the grass-plot and field-flower, are yet about us, and some few walking in the midst, who are mighty and awing, kind and like a child.

In that period of the world when the ignorance which had settled down upon the mind of man was passing off, and his understanding and heart were turned up and laid open to the day, there was a morning, earthy freshness in all he saw and felt. The dust and hot air of noon had not dimmed the colours, or killed the wholesomeness of all about him. The relentless curiosity of modern times had not broken in pieces the precious stone, or soiled and torn asunder the flower. Man was the worshipper of the works of God in their simple beauty and grandeur; not the vain inquisitor, eager to learn their structure, that he might prate of what he knew. All was rustic and unforced; "a generous nature was suffered to take her own way to perfection." The cottage seemed a shelter for earth's children, from which they might look out upon, and learn and love, her beauties. They dwelt in the religious twilight of her woods, and mused by her water-falls on the passage of years. The universal puttings-forth of spring quickened the pure spirits of the young; and the yellow leaf was the moral companion of the old. It was, indeed, nature without doors and within. Man walked abroad upon the green sod, and sat him down upon rushes by his fireside. The mind was as full of motion, various and creative, as the earth about it; and, like hers, its productions were its mere relievings, effortless, but plentiful. Its images were not formed in a daintily finished mould, or finically chiselled out; but like fairy frost-work, or the wavy sweep of a snowdrift, though ever beautiful, yet always seeming ac

cidental. It was the poetic age. Growing up in the absence of a false elegance, and not educated to the cautious and constrained politeness which crowded society has forced upon us, men were left to an independent individuality of character and conduct. Without the excitements of the pleasures and distinctions of the city, the mind spread itself out over the beauties about it; felt and nursed their truth; perceived a fitness and kindly relation in all things; not only gazed upon the lofty works of God, and walked by his still waters in the valley, but looked untired upon the flat sand-waste or the long stretch of a rough heath. The taste was not pampered and vitiated by ill-assorted prettinesses, turning the unnumbered beauties, the simplicity and outspread grandeur of this gigantic earth, into the huddled and offensively contrasted crowd of a garden; but the rock, fringed and scattered over with its green or silvery moss, was looked upon, though not seated in a bed of roses, violets, and pinks; the wholesome perfume of the pine was grateful, and the crisp tread over its fallen and matted leaves pleasant to the foot.

In this age of improvements, when multiplied inventions have rendered useless many acts to which individuals were once called in the common concerns of life,when one traverses a kingdom, without the touch of its breezes upon his cheek, and now and then takes a hasty peep, through his carriage window, at the scenery about him, as if he were a stranger to it and would not be unmannerly, we may boast of the facilities and harmless luxuries of the world we live in. But though it gives us facilities, it works into the character a sameness, and an indifference to particulars. The object we sought is turned out finished to our hands, without our labour or observation; it is attained without effort, and possessed without delight.