A SUMMER'S DAY. 359 



The sun has set, and has left a gorgeous halo of crimson- 

 red and purple with gold-tinted clouds to mark its apotheosis. 

 When you stroll through next year's Academy, or visit the 

 studios of your brethren of the brush, you will have learned 

 from the sunset yonder to be not overwise or over-critical in 

 looking at evening effects, or boastful of your ability to dis- 

 tinguish what is natural from what is unreal. Yonder clouds, 

 if painted in all their gorgeous and fast-fading reality, might 

 seem unreal and impossible; and the critic might then set him- 

 self above nature and artist alike, and maintain the absurdity 

 of effects he has never seen. Therefore let the sunset teach 

 you a canon of fair criticism and a lesson in guarding against 

 undue assumption of what nature may do or can do. 



We have reached by this time the estuary of our stream, 

 and we disembark, and, standing on the river's bank, survey 

 the fair prospect around. Once again, the morning still- 

 ness repeats itself; but the sense of evening quiet carries 

 with it a difference from the stillness of the day, a dif- 

 ference we may feel, but can hardly express. Deeper 

 grow the shadows ; and presently, as we stroll homewards, 

 the moon rises and makes a silver pathway of the broad 

 river we have left, the silver sheen succeeding the golden 

 lustre along which we previously passed. As evening 

 comes on apace, field and river are bathed in the pale 

 light and the rippling water sparkles beneath the gleam. 

 The stillness is broken only by the tinkling of sheep bells 

 from the folds close by ; but as we pass homewards, drinking 

 in the beauty of the scene, the church bells ring out an 

 evening peal, the melody of which resounds around us, and 

 seems to float down the river in varying cadences and strains. 

 The bells cease their chiming at last ; and as the notes die 

 away and re-echo over hill and dale, river and field, nature 

 at large seems to sink into a rest, and to be hushed with a 

 peace so still and sweet, that it is hard to realise that the 

 morrow will awake us with its stern call to the duties of a 

 new day. 



