the valley, laden with the balmy odours of fragrant plants and herbs! All our senses are regaled at once by the breeze, —hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, and feeling, are at the same time gratified.

Hark how it whispers among the sedge of the brook, and the bulrushes and high grass of the lonely pond! How it rustles among the dry leaves and brittle reeds in the hedgerows, and how sweetly and soothingly it swells on the ear from the full foliage of the tall trees, now loud, and then low, dying away in the distance till it becomes inaudible!

Look at the influence of the breeze on the objects around; the high grass is bending; the ripe corn is waving, and the boughs of the forest trees are gently swaying to and fro, turning up the under sides of their many-coloured leaves. The breeze makes lovely things more lovely.

What a fragance prevails when the breeze, scented with the perfume of the new-made hay, of heath-flowers and wild thyme, of beans, vetches, and clover in blossom, breathes around its varied sweets! It is pleasant then to roam abroad, and amid nature's gentle excitation to rejoice.

We

To the taste the breeze is delightful. How fresh and sweet it is, and what a sense of purity it imparts! swallow health in breathing it.

Be mine, when waving trees
And summer skies are given,

To taste the balmy breeze,

And drink the air of heaven!

Nor is the breeze less bountiful to the sense of feeling,

than to other senses. Oh, how gently it fans the face! how soft it is to the touch! how cool to the fevered brow of exercise! and how refreshing to the toil-worn and the faint!

How shall we thank the great Giver of all good for the breeze? He can "bring the wind out of his treasures" to

bless or to curse, to strengthen or to destroy. The breeze is a viewless dispenser of pleasure-an invisible physician, ministering to the enfeebled body and mind-an elemental Samaritan, going about on errands of mercy, and a messenger from the throne of the Eternal, to give health and happiness to mankind.

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE OLD CHURCH PORCH.

Aged country people. Their quaintness and quietude. The village churchyard. The old church porch. The aged rustic's narrative.-The group of graves.-Abel Haycroft and his three sons, Ambrose, Gideon, and Gregory.-Ambrose goes to sea and returns.-Gideon goes abroad and comes back.-Gregory receives them both.-Death of the two brothers, Ambrose and Gideon.-Gregory, the aged rustic, finishes his story.

THERE is a quietude and quaintness of demeanour

among aged people in the country, that renders it pleasant to converse with them. You may, perhaps, if you look for him, occasionally find, in farm-houses and cottages, a loud-talking, bustling old man, with an air of importance on his brow; but such an one is but an exception to a general rule. Grey-headed and bald-headed country people are usually grave, silent, and unpretending. There is, indeed, no reason why they should be otherwise; mingling as they do among their equals, or with those who have always acknowledged them their superiors, there would be no object gained in affecting importance.

While making this remark, I have at least a score of silent, thoughful-looking country characters in my eye, every one of which has some demand on my respect, and many of them on my affection. I am fond of old people; for though age is not wisdom, it has so long been the companion of

experience, that it can hardly fail in many things to be wise. There is

"The quiet stillness of a thinking mind
Self-occupied "

often very visible in aged country countenances, so that you
listen to the man of years, as to one on whom you can
depend. He will neither talk learnedly nor eloquently, nor
will he enter into matters too high for him; but in the
common things of life he is well instructed and will well
instruct you.
Some time ago I met with the following de-
scription, evidently drawn by one of my own way of thinking:-
I love to talk with the aged man; to enter into com-
munion with him of the grey head and the wrinkled fore-
head. Pleasant are the joyous gambols of light-hearted
childhood; grateful are the hopeful anticipations of ardent
youth; and full of interest are the matured and stable attain-
ments of manhood; but in the hour of solitude and reflection,
more pleasant, more grateful, and fuller of interest is the
chastened experience of the graver brow. There is that in
the straggling locks, the subdued features, and the quiet de-
meanour of old age hopefully looking onward, that harmonises
with my spirit. No wonder then, that having a full hour
to spare, I turned my steps to the old church porch.

66

I had walked, as a stranger, through the pleasant village, and loitered for some time in the churchyard among the tombs, gazing on the uncouthly-sculptured stones, and reading their simple inscriptions, when turning towards a group of hillocks by themselves, one of which was unturfed and unbriered, I observed an old man, with a strip of black crape round his hat, sitting alone in the porch. The declining sun shone upon him as he sat bending forward, leaning on his stick, which he held with both his hands. In a little space I was seated beside him.