out with attenuated delicacy, seemed to streak the distant horizon with darkened lines. On my right the winding Delaware lay stretched out in glassy beauty, and near me, glittering in the sunlight beyond, were a thousand gossamer webs that had survived a recent storm. The fields were unusually green, for the season, as if the year were clothing itself, like an expiring prelate, with its richest habiliments, that its departure might leave the impress of that beauty which comes from its usefulness. I had yielded to the influences of the scene, had allowed my feeling to predominate, and was in the midst of an unwonted abstraction from all ordinary cares and relations, catching something of that state with which the more gifted are indulged, when I was startled by the sound of footsteps upon the carpet-like grass around me. "Hardly looking for game here?" said the person inquiringly. "And without dog and gun?" said I. "There's not much game in these parts," said he. "And yet I was hunting!" said I. "Hunting pleasure from the prospect." "I do not derive much pleasure," said my companion, "from such things. Almost all fields are alike to me. Generally they are places for labor, or they lie between my residence and labor, and thus make a toilsome distance." "But do you not enjoy the pleasure of this scene? Do you not, while looking abroad from some eminence, feel a sensation different from what you experience while walking on the turnpike?" "Most generally. I think there was once or twice a feeling came over me here which I did not exactly understand." "And when was that?" "Always on Sunday morning, as I have been crossing the field to attend service at the church yonder. I could not tell whether it was a sense of relief from ordinary labor, or something connected with the service in which I was about to join; but, certainly, the fields, and woods, and water beyond, had a different appearance, and seemed to affect me differently from their ordinary influence. Perhaps as these feelings are recent, they may have sprung from another cause." "If the beauties of nature, and the influence of religious aspirations could not account for those feelings which you experienced, I can scarcely tell whence you derived the sensation." "I suppose that all beauties are not discernable at once, and our sympathies are not all awakened by a single exhibition of what may be productive of delight or sorrow. Whatever of pleasure I have derived from the beauties observable from such places as this, are not primarily referable to my own powers of application, but rather from the lessons of another--lessons derived from a few words, and from constant example." "And, pray, what _example_ could open to you new beauties in a landscape, or develop attractions in a scene which you had been in the habit of seeing for many years?"