m to our imagination to return to Paradise, with a
changed and saddened heart, than at first to be driven from it into the
outer world, if still permitted to carry thither something of that
spirit that had glorified our prime.

But yonder, we see, yet towers the Sycamore on the crown of the
hill--the first great Tree in the parish that used to get green; for
stony as seems the hard glebe, constricted by its bare and gnarled
roots, they draw sustenance from afar; and not another knoll on which
the sun so delights to pour his beams. Weeks before any other Sycamore,
and almost as early as the alder or the birch--the GLORY OF MOUNT
PLEASANT, for so we schoolboys called it, unfolded itself like a banner.
You could then see only the low windows of the dwelling--for eaves,
roof, and chimneys all disappeared--and then, when you stood beneath,
was not the sound of the bees like the very sound of the sea itself,
continuous, unabating, all day long unto evening, when, as if the tide
of life had ebbed, there was a perfect silence!

MOUNT PLEASANT! well indeed dost thou deserve the name, bestowed on
thee perhaps long ago, not by any one of the humble proprietors, but by
the general voice of praise, all eyes being won by thy cheerful beauty.
For from that shaded platform, what a sweet vision of fields and
meadows, knolls, braes, and hills, uncertain gleamings of a river, the
smoke of many houses, and glittering perhaps in the sunshine, the spire
of the House of God! To have seen Adam Morrison, the Elder, sitting with
his solemn, his austere Sabbath-face, beneath the pulpit, with his
expressive eyes fixed on the Preacher, you could not but have judged him
to be a man of a stern character and austere demeanour. To have seen him
at labour on the working days, you might almost have thought him the
serf of some tyrant-lord, for into all the toils of the field he carried
the force of a mind that would suffer nothing to be undone that strength
and skill could achieve; but within the humble porch of his own house,
beside his own board, and his own fireside, he was a man to be kindly
esteemed by his guests, by his own family tenderly and reverently
beloved. His wife was the comeliest matron in the parish, a woman of
active habits and a strong mind, but tempering the natural sternness of
her husband's character with that genial and jocund cheerfulness, that
of all the lesser virtues is the most efficient to the happiness of a
household. One d