y to some distance, muttering "a aye eats by
mysel!" He is saying grace! And now he is eating like an animal. 'Tis a
saying of old, "Their lives are hidden with God!"

This lovely little glen is almost altogether new to us: yet so
congenial its quiet to the longings of our heart, that all at once it is
familiar to us as if we had sojourned here for days--as if that cottage
were our dwelling-place--and we had retired hither to await the close.
Were we never here before--in the olden and golden time? Those dips in
the summits of the mountain seem to recall from oblivion memories of a
morning all the same as this, enjoyed by us with a different joy, almost
as if then we were a different being, joy then the very element in which
we drew our breath, satisfied now to live in the atmosphere of sadness
often thickened with grief. 'Tis thus that there grows a confusion among
the past times in the dormitory--call it not the burial-place--overshadowed
by sweet or solemn imagery--in the inland regions; nor can we question
the recollections as they rise--being ghosts, they are silent--their
coming and their going alike a mystery--but sometimes--as now--they are
happy hauntings--and age is almost gladdened into illusion of returning
youth.

'Tis a lovely little glen as in all the Highlands--yet we know not that
a painter would see in it the subject of a picture--for the sprinklings
of young trees have been sown capriciously by nature, and there seems no
reason why on that hill-side, and not on any other, should survive the
remains of an old wood. Among the multitude of knolls a few are eminent
with rocks and shrubs, but there is no central assemblage, and the green
wilderness wantons in such disorder that you might believe the pools
there to be, not belonging as they are to the same running water, but
each itself a small separate lakelet fed by its own spring. True, that
above its homehills there are mountains--and these are cliffs on which
the eagle might not disdain to build--but the range wheels away in its
grandeur to face a loftier region, of which we see here but the summits
swimming in the distant clouds.

God bless that hut! and have its inmates in His holy keeping! But what
Fairy is this coming unawares on us sitting by the side of the most
lucid of little wells? Set down thy pitcher, my child, and let us have a
look at thy happiness--for though thou mayest wonder at our words, and
think us a strange old man, coming and go