many a rural thane's frank, hospitable hall;--no one Great House
banishing from leagues of landscape the abodes of knight and squire, nor
menacing, with "the legitimate influence of property," the votes of
rebellious burghers. Everywhere, like finger-posts to heaven, you may
perceive the church-towers of rural hamlets embosomed in pleasant
valleys, or climbing up gentle slopes. At the horizon, the blue
fantastic outline of girdling hills mingles with the clouds. A famous
old cathedral, neighboured by the romantic ivy-grown walls of a ruined
castle, soars up from the centre of the town, and dominates the whole
survey--calm, as with conscious power. Nearing the town, the villas of
merchants and traders, released perhaps from business, skirt the road,
with trim gardens and shaven lawns. Now the small river, or rather
rivulet, of Ouzel, from which the town takes its name, steals out from
deep banks covered with brushwood or aged trees, and widening into brief
importance, glides under the arches of an ancient bridge; runs on, clear
and shallow, to refresh low fertile dairy-meadows, dotted with kine; and
finally quits the view, as brake and copse close round its narrowing,
winding way; and that which, under the city bridge, was an imposing
noiseless stream, becomes, amidst rustic solitudes, an insignificant
babbling brook.

From one of the largest villas in these charming suburbs came forth a
gentleman, middle-aged, and of a very mild and prepossessing countenance.
A young lady without a bonnet, but a kerchief thrown over her sleek dark
hair, accompanied him to the garden-gate, twining both hands
affectionately round his arm, and entreating him not to stand in thorough
draughts and catch cold, nor to step into puddles and wet his feet, and
to be sure to be back before dark, as there were such shocking accounts
in the newspapers of persons robbed and garotted even in the most
populous highways; and, above all, not to listen to the beggars in the