miles, by the park-wall, he took a path through the fields to the left, then struck back again to the right, and soon after had a glimpse of the river again above its passage through Sir John Slingsby's park. All this time Ned Hayward's mind was not unoccupied. He saw every thing that was passing about him, and meditated upon it without knowing that he was meditating. The sky was still quite gray when he set out, but presently the morning began to hang out her banners of purple and gold to welcome the monarch of day, and Ned Hayward said to himself, "How wonderfully beautiful all this is, and what a fine ordination is it that every change in nature should produce some variety of beauty." Then he remarked upon the trees, and the birds, and the meadows, and the reflections of the sky in a clear, smooth part of the river, and with somewhat of a painter's mind, perceived the beautiful harmony that is produced by the effect that one colour has upon another by its side. And then he passed a little village church, with the steeple shrouded in ivy, and it filled his mind full of quiet and peaceful images, and simple rural life (with a moral to it all), and his thoughts ran on to a thousand scenes of honest happiness, till he had the game at skittles and the maypole on the green up before him as plain as if it were all real; and the ivy and two old yews carried him away to early times when that ancient church was new. Heaven knows how far his fancy went galloping!--through the whole history of England at least. But all these reveries went out of his head almost as soon as the objects that excited them, and then, as he went through some neat hedgerows and pleasant corn-fields, which promised well in their green freshness for an abundant harvest, he began to think of partridges and an occasional pheasant lying under a holly-bush, and pointing dogs and tumbling birds, a full game-bag, and a capital dinner, with a drowsy evening afterwards. Good Heaven! what a thing it is to be young, and in high health, and in high spirits; how easy the load of life sits upon one; how insignificant are its cares to its enjoyments; every moment has its flitting dream; every hour its becoming enjoyment, if we choose to seek it; every flower, be it bitter or be it sweet, be it inodorous or be it perfumed, has its nectarial fall of honeyed drops, ripe for the lip that will vouchsafe to press it. But years, years, they bring on the autumn of the heart, when the bright and blooming petals have passed away, when the dreams have vanished with the light slumbers of early years, and every thing is in the seed for generations to come; we feel ourselves the husks of the earth, and find that it is time to fall away, and give place to the bloom and blossom of another epoch.