clumps of trees, the wide, green-margined street, with children playing
in it, and all the tokens of business, enjoyment, and prosperity. But
what was their astonishment! There was no longer any appearance of a
village! Even the fertile vale, in the hollow of which it lay, had
ceased to have existence. In its stead, they beheld the broad, blue
surface of a lake, which filled the great basin of the valley, from brim
to brim, and reflected the surrounding bills in its bosom, with as
tranquil an image as if it had been there ever since the creation of the
world. For an instant, the lake remained perfectly smooth. Then, a
little breeze sprang up, and caused the water to dance, glitter, and
sparkle in the early sunbeams, and to dash, with a pleasant rippling
murmur, against the hither shore.

The lake seemed so strangely familiar, that the old couple were greatly
perplexed, and felt as if they could only have been dreaming about a
village having lain there. But, the next moment, they remembered the
vanished dwellings, and the faces and characters of the inhabitants, far
too distinctly for a dream. The village had been there yesterday, and
now was gone!

"Alas!" cried these kind-hearted old people, "what has become of our
poor neighbors?"

"They exist no longer as men and women," said the elder traveller, in
his grand and deep voice, while a roll of thunder seemed to echo it at a
distance. "There was neither use nor beauty in such a life as theirs:
for they never softened or sweetened the hard lot of mortality by the
exercise of kindly affections between man and man. They retained no
image of the better life in their bosoms; therefore, the lake, that was
of old, has spread itself forth again, to reflect the sky!"