paused to gaze upon. And indeed the good man enjoyed a certain kind of
reputation for his comely looks and cheerful manner. His picture had even
been taken by a young artist in the neighbourhood; nay, the likeness had
been multiplied into engravings, somewhat rude and somewhat unfaithful,
which might be seen occupying no inconspicuous or dusty corner in the
principal printshop of the town: nor was mine host's character a
contradiction to his looks. He had seen enough of life to be intelligent,
and had judged it rightly enough to be kind. He had passed that line so
nicely given to man's codes in those admirable pages which first added
delicacy of tact to the strong sense of English composition. "We have
just religion enough," it is said somewhere in the Spectator, "to make us
hate, but not enough to make us love one another." Our good landlord,
peace be with his ashes! had never halted at this limit. The country
innkeeper might have furnished Goldsmith with a counterpart to his
country curate; his house was equally hospitable to the poor--his heart
equally tender, in a nature wiser than experience, to error, and equally
open, in its warm simplicity, to distress. Peace be with thee--Our
grandsire was thy patron--yet a patron thou didst not want. Merit in thy
capacity is seldom bare of reward. The public want no indicators to a
house like thine. And who requires a third person to tell him how to
appreciate the value of good nature and good cheer?

As Walter stood, and contemplated the old man bending over the sweet
fresh earth, (and then, glancing round, saw the quiet garden stretching
away on either side with its boundaries lost among the thick evergreen,)
something of that grateful and moralizing stillness with which some
country scene (the rura et silentium) generally inspires us, when we
awake to its consciousness from the troubled dream of dark and unquiet
thought, stole over his mind: and certain old lines which his uncle, who
loved the soft and rustic morality that pervades the ancient race of