the harvest.

Mark is a bonny-looking boy, the most regular-featured of the family. He
is exceedingly calm; his smile is shrewd; he can say the driest, most
cutting things in the quietest of tones. Despite his tranquillity, a
somewhat heavy brow speaks temper, and reminds you that the smoothest
waters are not always the safest. Besides, he is too still, unmoved,
phlegmatic, to be happy. Life will never have much joy in it for Mark.
By the time he is five-and-twenty he will wonder why people ever laugh,
and think all fools who seem merry. Poetry will not exist for Mark,
either in literature or in life; its best effusions will sound to him
mere rant and jargon. Enthusiasm will be his aversion and contempt. Mark
will have no youth; while he looks juvenile and blooming, he will be
already middle-aged in mind. His body is now fourteen years of age, but
his soul is already thirty.

Martin, the youngest of the three, owns another nature. Life may, or may
not, be brief for him, but it will certainly be brilliant. He will pass
through all its illusions, half believe in them, wholly enjoy them, then
outlive them. That boy is not handsome--not so handsome as either of his
brothers. He is plain; there is a husk upon him, a dry shell, and he
will wear it till he is near twenty, then he will put it off. About that
period he will make himself handsome. He will wear uncouth manners till
that age, perhaps homely garments; but the chrysalis will retain the
power of transfiguring itself into the butterfly, and such
transfiguration will, in due season, take place. For a space he will be
vain, probably a downright puppy, eager for pleasure and desirous of
admiration, athirst, too, for knowledge. He will want all that the world
can give him, both of enjoyment and lore; he will, perhaps, take deep
draughts at each fount. That thirst satisfied, what next? I know not.
Martin might be a remarkable man. Whether he will or not, the seer is
powerless to predict: on that subject there has been no open vision.

Take Mr. Yorke's family in the aggregate: there is as much mental power
in those six young heads, as much originality, as much activity and
vigour of brain, as--divided amongst half a dozen commonplace
broods--would give to each rather more than an average amount of sense
and capacity. Mr. Yorke knows this, and is proud of his race. Yorkshire
has such families here and there amongst her hills and wolds--peculiar,
racy, vigorous; of good blo