ty of ladies on
horseback, in green ridings habits, and gentlemen attendant, and there
a flock of sheep for the market, pattering over the bridge with a
multitude nous clatter of their little hoofs; here a Frenchman with a
hand-organ on his shoulder, and there an itinerant Swiss jeweller. On
this side, heralded by a blast of clarions and bugles, appears a train
of wagons conveying all the wild beasts of a caravan; and on that a
company of summer soldiers marching from village to village on a
festival campaign, attended by the "brass band." Now look at the
scene, and it presents an emblem of the mysterious confusion, the
apparently insolvable riddle, in which individuals, or the great world
itself, seem often to be involved. What miracle shall set all things
right again?

But see! the schooner has thrust her bulky carcase through the chasm;
the draw descends; horse and foot pass onward and leave the bridge
vacant from end to end. "And thus," muses the toll-gatherer, "have I
found it with all stoppages, even though the universe seemed to be at
a stand." The sage old man!

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 an