Far westward now the reddening sun throws a broad sheet of splendor across the flood, and to the eyes of distant boatmen gleams brightly among the timbers of the bridge.  Strollers come from the town to quaff the freshening breeze.  One or two let down long lines and haul up flapping flounders or cunners or small cod, or perhaps an eel.  Others, and fair girls among them, with the flush of the hot day still on their cheeks, bend over the railing and watch the heaps of seaweed floating upward with the flowing tide.  The horses now tramp heavily along the bridge and wistfully bethink them of their stables.—­Rest, rest, thou weary world! for to-morrow’s round of toil and pleasure will be as wearisome as to-day’s has been, yet both shall bear thee onward a day’s march of eternity.—­Now the old toll-gatherer looks seaward and discerns the lighthouse kindling on a far island, and the stars, too, kindling in the sky, as if but a little way beyond; and, mingling reveries of heaven with remembrances of earth, the whole procession of mortal travellers, all the dusty pilgrimage which he has witnessed, seems like a flitting show of phantoms for his thoughtful soul to muse upon.

THE VISION OF THE FOUNTAIN.

At fifteen I became a resident in a country village more than a hundred miles from home.  The morning after my arrival—­a September morning, but warm and bright as any in July—­I rambled into a wood of oaks with a few walnut trees intermixed, forming the closest shade above my head.  The ground was rocky, uneven, overgrown with bushes and clumps of young saplings and traversed only by cattle-paths.  The track which I chanced to follow led me to a crystal spring with a border of grass as freshly green as on May morning, and overshadowed by the limb of a great oak.  One solitary sunbeam found its way down and played like a goldfish in the water.

From my childhood I have loved to gaze into a spring.  The water filled a circular basin, small but deep and set round with stones, some of which were covered with slimy moss, the others naked and of variegated hue—­reddish, white and brown.  The bottom was covered with coarse sand, which sparkled in the lonely sunbeam and seemed to illuminate the spring with an unborrowed light.  In one spot the gush of the water violently agitated the sand, but without obscuring the fountain or breaking the glassiness of its surface.  It appeared as if some living creature were about to emerge—­the naiad of the spring, perhaps, in the shape of a beautiful young woman with a gown of filmy water-moss, a belt of rainbow-drops and a cold, pure, passionless countenance.  How would the beholder shiver, pleasantly yet fearfully, to see her sitting on one of the stones, paddling her white feet in the ripples and throwing up water to sparkle in the sun!  Wherever she laid her hands on grass and flowers, they would immediately be moist, as with morning dew.  Then would she