Pittie olde age, within whose silver haires
Honour and reverence evermore have raind.
MARLOWES TAMBURLAINE.
THOSE who are in the habit of remarking such matters must have noticed the passive quiet of an English landscape on Sunday. The clag of the mill, the regularly recurring stroke of the ?ail, the din of the blacksmiths hammer, the whistling of the ploughman, the rattling of the cart, and all other sounds of rural labor are suspehe very farm-dogs bark less frequently, being less disturbed by passing travellers. At such times I have almost fahe wind sunk into quiet, and that the sunny landscape, with its fresh green tints melting into blue haze, ehe hallowed calm.
Sweet day, so pure, so calm, sh
The bridal of the earth and sky.
Well was it ordaihat the day of devotion should be a day of rest. The holy repose which reigns over the face of nature has its moral in?uence; every restless passion is charmed down, and we feel the natural religion of the soul gently springing up within us. For my part, there are feelings that visit me, in a try church, amid the beautiful serenity of nature, which I experienowhere else; and if not a mious, I think I am a better man on Sunday than on any other day of the seven.
During my ret residen the try, I used frequently to attend at the old village church. Its shadowy aisles, its mouldering mos, its dark oaken panelling, all reverend with the gloom of departed years, seemed to ?t it for the haunt of solemation; but, being in a wealthy, aristocratieighborhood, the glitter of fashiorated even into the sanctuary; and I felt myself tinually thrown back upon the world, by the frigidity and pomp of the poor worms arouhe only being in the whole gregation eared thhly to feel the humble and prostrate piety of a true Christian oor decrepit old woman, bending uhe weight of years and in?rmities. She bore the traces of somethier than abject poverty. The lingerings of det pride were visible in her appearance. Her dress, though humble ireme, was scrupulously . Some trivial respect, too, had been awarded her, for she did not take her seat among the village poor, but sat alone oeps of the altar. She seemed to have survived all love, all friendship, all society, and to have nothi her but the hopes of heaven. When I saw her feebly rising and bending her aged form in prayer; habitually ing her prayer-book, which her palsied hand and failing eyes could not permit her to read, but which she evidently knew by heart, I felt persuaded that the faltering voice of that poor woman arose to heaven far before the responses of the clerk, the swell of the an, or the ting of the choir.
I am fond of l about try churches, and this was so delightfully situated, that it frequently attracted me. It stood on a knoll, round which a small stream made a beautiful bend and then wound its way through a long reach of soft meadow sery.
The church was surrounded by yew trees, which seemed almost coeval with itself. Its tall Gothic spire shot up lightly from among them, with rooks and crows generally wheeling about it. I was seated there oill sunny m watg two laborers who were digging a grave. They had chosen one of the most remote and ed ers of the churchyard, where, from the number of nameless graves around, it would appear that the i and friendless were huddled into the earth. I was told that the new-made grave was for the only son of a poor hile I was meditating on the distins of worldly r