ugust evening before a thunderstorm;
every wildflower in the hedgerow exactly the flowers of August--every
sign in the air exactly those of the month. Bless you! a woman would
have filled the hedge with violets and cowslips. Nobody else but my
friend Moss could have written that description."

_Squire._--"I don't know; there's a simile about the waste of corn-seed
in hand-sowing, which makes me think he must be a farmer!"

_Mrs. Dale_, (scornfully,)--"A farmer! In hob-nailed shoes, I suppose! I
say it is a woman."

_Mrs. Hazeldean._--"A WOMAN, and A MOTHER!"

_Parson._--"A middle-aged man, and a naturalist."

_Squire._--"No, no, Parson; certainly a young man; for that love scene
puts me in mind of my own young days, when I would have given my ears to
tell Harry how handsome I thought her; and all I could say was--'Fine
weather for the crops, Miss.' Yes, a young man, and a farmer. I should
not wonder if he had held the plough himself."

_Randal_, (who had been turning over the pages.)--"This sketch of Night
in London comes from a man who has lived the life of cities, and looked
at wealth with the eyes of poverty. Not bad! I will read the book."

"Strange," said the Parson, smiling, "that this little work should so
have entered into our minds, suggested to all of us different ideas, yet
equally charmed all--given a new and fresh current to our dull country
life--animated us as with the sight of a world in our breasts we had
never seen before, save in dreams;--a little work like this, by a man we
don't know, and never may! Well, _that_ knowledge _is_ power, and a
noble one!"

"A sort of power, certainly, sir," said Randal, candidly; and that
night, when Randal retired to his own room, he suspended his schemes and
projects, and read, as he rarely did, without an object to gain by the
reading.

The work surprised him by the pleasure it gave. Its charm lay in the
writer's calm enjoyment of the Beautiful. It seemed like some happy soul
sunning itself in the light of its own thoughts. Its power was so
tranquil and even, that it was only a critic who could perceive how much
force and vigor were necessary to sustain the wing that floated aloft
with so imperceptible an effort. There was no one faculty predominating
tyrannically over the others; all seemed proportioned in the felicitous
symmetry of a nature rounded, integral, and complete. And when the work
was closed, it left behind it a tender warmth that played around