edness, alleging the words, "I am come to set the
husband against the wife, the son against the father, and the
daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law." People came to feel nature
also as discordant with themselves; the very grass and trees, and the
quietness of the air, seemed to many not so good as before; the mute,
inanimate things appeared almost as so many tempting wiles of a hidden
power which was below, working through all, and meaning man evil. One
would have thought, as they stood listlessly at their doors of an evening,
looking beyond into the distance, that they would have taken up staff or
scrip and set out on pilgrimage, had they but known where to go, or what
to do. After all, however, this state of matters wore itself out, and
gradually returned to something like the former; nor would any one have
been the worse, rather, in truth, a little wiser, upon the eventual
settlement of a new pastor at Groenstetten. Only, indeed, that a few who
had not joined in the late feeling, and who had previously been united to
their neighbours by intercourse, had for the time seemed to be excluded
from their better sympathies, became more worldly, and were inclined to
scoff at holy things. As in all cases of extremes, the bad had grown more
addicted to vice, none stretching out to them a better hand; and it was
long ere a reviving sense of brotherhood did much to raise them higher.

Still the most peculiar feature of this excitement was, that, as if its
impulse must extend through every class, the younger people latterly
showed signs of a religious emotion, yet stronger and more remarkable than
in those less subject to impressions from their years. What they saw and
heard in others had sunk into the children's minds, which brooded upon it
as if upon the sense of some dispeace, and contradiction at the heart of
domestic forms; as if to their clearer instinct various inconsistencies
in the practice of life, nay in the parental relations, had been revealed;
yet for which the true remedy had been by them misconceived. This appeared
with many of them partly in the shape of impatience to go forth into the
world, a weariness when the sun light, shining into the cottage, stole
from chair to chair, and the clock ticked monotonously against the wall.
Something that was to be done and suffered seemed to lie far without; the
object of their lives and souls, from which friends, parents, with their
daily earth-customs, were tyrannically