“I cannot,” said I, sniffing, “give a reason for that which does not exist; but I can see a reason why good men should sometimes _think_ so, from their mistaking the warmth and light of gratitude springing up in their own hearts on that holy day, for the rays of the sun above them!” “It may be so,” said the old man, “but I shall live and die in the belief that there was something warmer and brighter in the sun on that blessed morning, than I ever felt either before or since. The early work of the day, (and in a farm like ours there is always some labour which must necessarily be attended to even on the Sunday,) was finished long before the usual hour, and we were all dressed in our very best and on our way for SEATHWAITE Chapel, soon after nine o’clock. The early rays of the sun lighted up Coniston OLD MAN, {52} so that you might count every stone in his body. As we descended the slope of the mountain side for the vale of the Duddon, you might see a thousand white threads of water pouring down from every height that surrounded the valley, (for there had been a heavy shower of rain in the night,) and all rushing, with headlong impetuosity, into the brawling stream below. Then you could trace that stream, winding its beautiful way, now in sunshine, and now in shadow, till it gradually widened into a broad estuary, and lost\ itself in the bay of MORECAMBE, the dark mass of PEEL CASTLE standing calmly amidst the waves, as if to mark the boundary between the broad river and the ocean. This sight of itself prepared the mind for the religious impressions which were to follow; even a child like me seeing in the picture before him an emblem of the hasty bustle of time and the quiet repose of eternity; and I could not resist putting up a silent prayer to GOD, that the light of His _Grace_ might continue to shine upon the days of my short and feverish life as the sun in heaven was then glittering upon the mountain rills, now so bright and busy, and in a few hours doomed to become silent and still, as though they had never been. But another sight, still more impressive, broke on our view as we turned the crest of the little hill from which we first looked down on the chapel to which we were tending. Nothing, I believe, puzzles strangers so much, on visiting our Lake country, as to find out where all the people live. The houses of the district are placed in such odd nooks and corners, so buried under little knolls or spreading trees, and so like the old grey rocks about them in colour and shape, that an inexperienced traveller might roam through half that mountainous region, and fancy that its only inhabitants were sheep, rooks, and wanderers like himself. In the mining districts, too, one half of the inhabitants live under ground during the week, and it is only on a Sunday, when they come up to worship GOD with their brethren, that they see the light of the blessed day. Hence it is on