r old pains and pleasures, have seemed to pass at once
into a new state of being. Crawling forth, from day to day, to some
green sunny spot, they have had such memories wakened up within them by
the sight of the sky, and hill and plain, and glistening water, that a
foretaste of heaven itself has soothed their quick decline, and they
have sunk into their tombs, as peacefully as the sun whose setting they
watched from their lonely chamber window but a few hours before, faded
from their dim and feeble sight! The memories which peaceful country
scenes call up, are not of this world, nor of its thoughts and hopes.
Their gentle influence may teach us how to weave fresh garlands for the
graves of those we loved: may purify our thoughts, and bear down
before it old enmity and hatred; but beneath all this, there lingers,
in the least reflective mind, a vague and half-formed consciousness of
having held such feelings long before, in some remote and distant time,
which calls up solemn thoughts of distant times to come, and bends down
pride and worldliness beneath it.

It was a lovely spot to which they repaired. Oliver, whose days had
been spent among squalid crowds, and in the midst of noise and
brawling, seemed to enter on a new existence there. The rose and
honeysuckle clung to the cottage walls; the ivy crept round the trunks
of the trees; and the garden-flowers perfumed the air with delicious
odours. Hard by, was a little churchyard; not crowded with tall
unsightly gravestones, but full of humble mounds, covered with fresh
turf and moss: beneath which, the old people of the village lay at
rest. Oliver often wandered here; and, thinking of the wretched grave
in which his mother lay, would sometimes sit him down and sob unseen;
but, when he raised his eyes to the deep sky overhead, he would cease
to think of her as lying in the ground, and would weep for her, sadly,
but without pain.

It was a happy time. The days were peaceful and serene; the nights
brought with them neither fear nor care; no languishing in a wretched
prison, or associating with wretched men; nothing but pleasant and
happy thoughts. Every morning he went to a white-headed old gentleman,
who lived near the little church: who taught him to read better, and to
write: and who spoke so kindly, and took such pains, that Oliver could
never try enough to please him. Then, he would walk with Mrs. Maylie
and Rose, and hear them talk of books; or perhaps sit