ds, the window shone so brightly against the icicles hanging from
the roof, as the Christmas-tree, with its prettily-adorned branches, was
lighted-up; and the whole united family surprised each other with
carefully prepared gifts. Then at Easter time, when spring was bursting
out of trees and earth, and the birds beginning to sing again, you might
have seen with what joy the children rolled their coloured paschal eggs
along the grass, parents entering into their feelings with smiles. It was
a serious business for them to dress and water the graves under the church
wall, wreathing the small head-stones with garlands of fresh wild-flowers,
gathered about the ruins of the old castle, which rose on a neighbouring
height. Nor did many evenings ever pass that there was not some meeting of
the young people in one of the village houses, where the girls brought
their spindles, or pieces of cloth to make a bedcover for the dame; while
the youths stood by to seize the opportunity for sundry advances of rustic
courtship. All this gaiety was by no means inconsistent with the industry
in which this resembled other villages of the district; and as little did
it result from any want of earnestness and serious thought in matters of
religion, or in the attendance upon those services to which the church in
due season called every one. For it was while the venerable old pastor
lived, that this state of things lasted at Groenstetten. The good man
himself diffused by his presence among them, as well as by his precepts, a
spirit not only of devotion, but of cheerfulness; nor would he have
failed, in case of any causeless absence from church, or on occasion of a
breach of morality, to visit, and faithfully reprove the offender. Even
after his death, when the services were only occasionally performed by
strangers, the change of feeling in the village would not have occurred,
but for some other circumstances; doubtless the people themselves
possessed sufficient independence and ground of faith to pursue their
lives according, to the true temper of rational men, had none interfered
with them.

But, about this time, there came frequently to Groenstetten several
preachers of a new and almost unknown sect, and of a cast altogether
different from what the people had been accustomed to. These persons
considered that in time past at Groenstetten all had been in a manner
spiritually dead; that men there, indeed, were as good as asleep to all
eternal real