here among
the furrows in some small late field, won from the woods; and you hear
the laughter, and the echoes of the laughter--one sound--of children
busied in half-work half-play; for what else in vernal sunshine is the
occupation of young rustic life? 'Tis no Arcadia--no golden age. But a
lovelier scene--in the midst of all its grandeur--is not in merry and
majestic England; nor did the hills of this earth ever circumscribe a
pleasanter dwelling for a nobler peasantry, than these Cumbrian ranges
of rocks and pastures, where the raven croaks in his own region,
unregarded in theirs by the fleecy flocks. How beautiful the Church
Tower!

On a knoll not far from the shore, and not high above the water, yet by
an especial felicity of place gently commanding all that reach of the
Lake with all its ranges of mountains--every single tree, every grove,
and all the woods seeming to show or to conceal the scene at the bidding
of the Spirit of Beauty--reclined two Figures--the one almost rustic,
but venerable in the simplicity of old age--the other no longer young,
but still in the prime of life--and though plainly apparelled, with form
and bearing such as are pointed out in cities, because belonging to
distinguished men. The old man behaved towards him with deference, but
not humility; and between them two--in many things unlike--it was clear
even from their silence that there was friendship.

A little way off, and sometimes almost running, now up and now down the
slopes and hollows, was a girl about eight years old--whether beautiful
or not you could not know, for her face was either half-hidden in golden
hair, or when she tossed the tresses from her brow, it was so bright in
the sunshine that you saw no features, only a gleam of joy. Now she was
chasing the butterflies, not to hurt them, but to get a nearer sight of
their delicate gauze wings--the first that had come--she wondered
whence--to waver and wanton for a little while in the spring sunshine,
and then, she felt, as wondrously, one and all, as by consent, to
vanish. And now she stooped as if to pull some little wildflower, her
hand for a moment withheld by a loving sense of its loveliness, but ever
and anon adding some new colour to the blended bloom intended to gladden
her father's eyes--though the happy child knew full well, and sometimes
wept to know, that she herself had his entire heart. Yet gliding, or
tripping, or dancing along, she touched not with fairy foot o