incumbent, and we returned home in company. In one short hour we reached
it. How many hours have passed since _that_ was ravished from the hand
of Time, and registered in the tenacious memory! Years have floated by,
and silently have dropped into the boundless sea, unheeded, unregretted;
and these few minutes--sacred relics--live and linger in the world, in
mercy it may be, to lighten up my lonely hearth, or save the whitened
head from drooping. The spirit of one golden hour shall hover through a
life, and shed glory where he falls. What are the unfruitful,
unremembered years that rush along, frightening mortality with their
fatal speed--an instant in eternity! What are the moments loaded with
passion, intense, and never-dying--years, ages upon earth! Away with the
divisions of time, whilst one short breath--the smallest particle or
measure of duration, shall outweigh ages. Breathless and silent is the
dewy eve. Trailing a host of glittering clouds behind him, the sun
stalks down, and leaves the emerald hills in deeper green. The lambs are
skipping on the path--the shepherd as loth to lead them home as they to
go. The labourer has done his work, and whistles his way back. The
minister has much of good and wise to say to his young family. They hear
the business of the day; their guardian draws the moral, and bids them
think it over. Upon my arm I bear his child, the fairest object of the
twilight group. She tells me histories of this charmed spot, and the
good old tales that are as old as the gray church beneath us: she
smiles, and speaks of joys amongst the hills, ignorant of the tearful
eye and throbbing heart beside her, that overflow with new-found bliss,
and cannot bear their weight of happiness.

Another day of natural gladness--and then the Sabbath; this not less
cheerful and inspiriting than the preceding. The sun shone fair upon the
ancient church, and made its venerable gray stones sparkle and look
young again. The dark-green ivy that for many a year has clung there,