summer’s loveliness.  Once, when our coach stopped, a peasant girl approached us with a nosegay, which she entreated me to buy.  My fellow-traveller was impatient to obtain it.  I gave it to him, and, for an hour, all was neglected for the toy.  He touched the flowers one by one, viewed them attentively and lovingly, as we do children whom we have known, and watched, and loved from infancy—­now caressing this, now smiling upon that.  What recollections did they summon in the mind of the destitute and almost mindless creature?  What pictures rose there?—­pictures that may never be excluded from the soul of man, however dim may burn the intellectual light.  His had been no happy boyhood, yet, in the wilderness of his existence, there must have been vouchsafed to him in mercy the few green spots that serve to attach to earth the most afflicted and forlorn of her sad children.  How natural for the glimpses to revisit the broken heart, thus employed, thus roused and animated by the light of heaven, rendering all things beautiful and glad!

As we approached the village, my companion ceased to regard his many-coloured friends with the same exclusive attention and unmixed delight.  His spirits sank—­his joy fled.  Clouds gathered across his brow; he withdrew his hand from mine, and he sat for an hour, brooding.  He held the neglected nosegay before him, and plucked the pretty leaves one by one—­not conscious, I am sure, of what he did.  In a short time, every flower was destroyed, and lay in its fragments before him.  Then, as if stung by remorse for the cruel act, or shaken by the heavy thoughts that pressed upon his brain, he covered his pallid face, and groaned bitterly.  What were those thoughts?  How connected with the resting-place towards which we were hastening rapidly?  My own anxiety became intense.

The village of Belton, situated near the mouth, and at the broadest part of the river Parret, consisted of one long narrow street, and a few houses scattered here and there on the small eminences which sheltered it.  The adjacent country was of the same character as that which we had quitted—­less luxuriant, perhaps, but still rich and striking.  We arrived at mid-day.  I determined to alight at the inn at which the coach put up, and to make my first enquiries there.  From the moment that we rattled along the stones that formed the entrance to the village, an unfavourable alteration took place in my companion.  He grew excited and impatient; and his lips quivered, and his eyes sparkled, as I had never seen them before.  I was satisfied that we had reached the object of his long desire, and that in a few minutes the mysterious relation in which he stood to the place would be ascertained.  “He MUST be known,” I continued to repeat to myself; “the first eye that falls on him, will recognize him instantly.”  We reached the inn; we alighted.  The landlord and the ostler came to the coach door, and received us with extreme civility, and the former assisted the idiot in his eager endeavour to reach the ground—­I watched the action, expecting him to start, to speak, to claim acquaintance—­and having completed the polite intention, he stood smiling and scraping.  I looked at him, then at the idiot, and saw at once that they were strangers.  A dozen idlers stood about the door.  I waited for a recognition:  none came.