shake the knowledge off.  I was taking mean advantage of her confidence, assuming a character to which I had no claim, and listening to the accents of innocence and virtue with the equanimity of one good and spotless as herself.  In the afternoon the young students resumed their work.  When it was over, we strolled amongst the hills; and, at the close of a delightful walk, found ourselves in the enchanting village.  Here we encountered Miss Fairman and the incumbent, and we returned home in company.  In one short hour we reached it.  How many hours have passed since that was ravished from the hand of Time, and registered in the tenacious memory!  Years have floated by, and silently have dropped into the boundless sea, unheeded, unregretted; and these few minutes—­sacred relics—­live and linger in the world, in mercy it may be, to lighten up my lonely hearth, or save the whitened head from drooping.  The spirit of one golden hour shall hover through a life, and shed glory where he falls.  What are the unfruitful, unremembered years that rush along, frightening mortality with their fatal speed—­an instant in eternity!  What are the moments loaded with passion, intense, and never-dying—­years, ages upon earth!  Away with the divisions of time, whilst one short breath—­the smallest particle or measure of duration, shall outweigh ages.  Breathless and silent is the dewy eve.  Trailing a host of glittering clouds behind him, the sun stalks down, and leaves the emerald hills in deeper green.  The lambs are skipping on the path—­the shepherd as loth to lead them home as they to go.  The labourer has done his work, and whistles his way back.  The minister has much of good and wise to say to his young family.  They hear the business of the day; their guardian draws the moral, and bids them think it over.  Upon my arm I bear his child, the fairest object of the twilight group.  She tells me histories of this charmed spot, and the good old tales that are as old as the gray church beneath us:  she smiles, and speaks of joys amongst the hills, ignorant of the tearful eye and throbbing heart beside her, that overflow with new-found bliss, and cannot bear their weight of happiness.

Another day of natural gladness—­and then the Sabbath; this not less cheerful and inspiriting than the preceding.  The sun shone fair upon the ancient church, and made its venerable gray stones sparkle and look young again.  The dark-green ivy that for many a year has clung there, looked no longer sad and sombre, but gay and lively as the newest of the new-born leaves that smiled on every tree.  The inhabitants of the secluded village were already a-foot when we proceeded from the parsonage, and men and women from adjacent villages were on the road to join them.  The deep-toned bell pealed solemnly, and sanctified the vale; for its sound strikes deeply ever on the broad ear of nature.  Willows and yew-trees shelter the graves of the departed villagers, and the living wend their way beneath them, subdued