ne knows many things--the moon or the Mauritius, for instance--from
the description of others. The picture painted for me had been true to
life, but not living; yet it had been sufficiently lifelike to make the
reality strangely familiar. And now I looked at it with double
vision--through my own eyes and my father's; and the thought of what he
would have felt quickened my perceptions and attuned them to the spirit
of my ancestors. The moors were sheeted in purple, brightened by
clumps of golden gorse, and I could easily have followed the example of
Linnaeus, who, when he first saw the yellow blossom, is said to have
fallen on his knees and praised God for its beauty.

The squire had known the moors always. To him the scene speaks of
home. I do not think the actual beauty of it impresses him greatly,
perhaps because of its extreme familiarity, and it does not arouse in
him the same sensation of pleasure or appeal to his artistic sense in
the same degree as the grander scenery he has so lately left behind.

But this _contents_ him as nothing else does or could! It is as when
one exchanges the gilded chairs of state for the old, familiar
arm-chair which would appear shabby to some people, or the dress shoes
of ceremony for the homely slippers on the hearth. He admits now that
he is happier than he had ever been abroad, and that he is glad to
spend the late evening of his days amid the friendly scenes of his
youth and manhood.

As for Mother Hubbard, she is quite unconsciously a mixture of poet and
prophet. Everything speaks to her of God.

"Yes, love," she said quite recently, "'He maketh everything beautiful
in its season;'" and to her the country is always beautiful, because it
is always as God made it. That is why she loves it so much, I am sure;
and whether it glows and sparkles beneath the hot sun of August or lies
dun and grey under the clouded skies of February it is always full of
charm. To her, all God's paintings show the hand of the Master,
whether done in monochrome or in the colours of the rainbow, and none
of them fails to satisfy her.

And Nature preaches to her, but the sermons are always comforting to
her soul, for her inward ear has never been trained to catch the gloomy
messages which some of us hear so readily. But where she finds
consolation I discover disquietude.

The horse had been pulled up at a point where the wide panorama
stretched limitlessly before us, and for a time we had al