her how young ladies ought to walk. How silently morning stole over the
earth! It was as if youth had the day and the world to itself. The
shutters of the cottage were still closed, and Evelyn cast a glance
upward, to assure herself that her mother, who also rose betimes, was not
yet stirring. So she tripped along, singing from very glee, to secure a
companion, and let out Sultan; and a few moments afterwards, they were
scouring over the grass, and descending the rude steps that wound down
the cliff to the smooth sea sands. Evelyn was still a child at heart,
yet somewhat more than a child in mind. In the majesty of--

"That hollow, sounding, and mysterious main,"--

in the silence broken but by the murmur of the billows, in the solitude
relieved but by the boats of the early fishermen, she felt those deep and
tranquillizing influences which belong to the Religion of Nature.
Unconsciously to herself, her sweet face grew more thoughtful, and her
step more slow. What a complex thing is education! How many
circumstances, that have no connection with books and tutors, contribute
to the rearing of the human mind! The earth and the sky and the ocean
were among the teachers of Evelyn Cameron; and beneath her simplicity of
thought was daily filled, from the turns of invisible spirits, the
fountain of the poetry of feeling.

This was the hour when Evelyn most sensibly felt how little our real life
is chronicled by external events,--how much we live a second and a higher
life in our meditations and dreams. Brought up, not more by precept than
example, in the faith which unites creature and Creator, this was the
hour in which thought itself had something of the holiness of prayer; and
if (turning from dreams divine to earlier visions) this also was the hour
in which the heart painted and peopled its own fairyland below, of the