hastens or
lingers, according to its mood; hankering here and there, not to be away
yet; and then, by the doing of its own work, led to a swift perplexity
of ripples. Here along its side, and there softly leaning over it, fresh
green meadows lie reposing in the settled meaning of the summer day. For
this is a safer time of year than the flourish of the spring-tide, when
the impulse of young warmth awaking was suddenly smitten by the bleak
east wind, and cowslip and cuckoo-flower and speedwell got their bright
lips browned with cold. Then, moreover, must the meads have felt the
worry of scarcely knowing yet what would be demanded of them; whether to
carry an exacting load of hay, or only to feed a few sauntering cows.

But now every trouble has been settled for the best; the long grass
is mown, and the short grass browsed, and capers of the fairies and
caprices of the cows have dappled worn texture with a deeper green.
Therefore let eyes that are satisfied here--as any but a very bad eye
must be, with so many changes of softness--follow the sweet lead of the
valley; and there, in a bend of the gently brawling river, stands the
never-brawling church.

A church less troubled with the gift of tongues is not to be found in
England: a church of gray stone that crumbles just enough to entice
frail mortal sympathy, and confesses to the storms it has undergone in
a tone that conciliates the human sigh. The tower is large, and high
enough to tell what the way of the wind is without any potato-bury on
the top, and the simple roof is not cruciated with tiles of misguided
fancy. But gray rest, and peace of ages, and content of lying calmly
six feet deeper than the bustle of the quick; memory also, and oblivion,
following each other slowly, like the shadows of the church-yard
trees--for all of these no better place can be, nor softer comfort.

For the village of Shoxford runs up on the rise, and straggles away from
its burial-place, as a child from his school goes mitching. There are
some few little ups and downs in the manner of its building, as well as
in other particulars about it; but still it keeps as parallel with the
crooked river as the far more crooked ways of men permit. But the whole
of the little road of houses runs down the valley from the church-yard
gate; and above the church, looking up the pretty valley, stands nothing
but the mill and the plank bridge below it; and a furlong above that
again the stone bridge, whe