74 THE BANK ACCOUNTANT. 



sence only serves to enhance his passion, and he learns 

 to concentrate in his rare and hurried visits the same 

 amount of enjoyment which in other times was spread 

 over the many and prolonged. Never was I more 

 strongly impressed with the truth of this than at present, 

 or more desirous that I could convey to the solitude of 

 your chamber a transcript of the scene I contemplate, 

 and of the feelings it has awakened. Quiet pleasures 

 are ever the most lasting. How many sources of enjoy- 

 ment are shut up by time ! but that which draws its 

 supply from the wonderful sympathy that exists between 

 the frame of nature and the spirit of man is assuredly 

 not of the number. The child draws from it all unwit- 

 tingly when, rejoicing in the clear air and the sunshine, 

 it flings itself down for the first time on a bed of flowers ; 

 and many long years after, when the seasons of youth 

 and riper manhood have passed away, and a thousand 

 pleasures of after growth have palled on the sense, and 

 then ceased to exist, the heart of the invalid in his sick 

 chamber swells with all the quiet fervour of its earliest 

 attachment, when, from under the open curtain, he sees 

 the foliage of midsummer waving to the cool breeze, and 

 its sun sparkling to the sea. The true religion seems to 

 be the only one that addresses itself to this feeling. The 

 Psalms abound with delightful descriptions ; and there 

 are lovely images, that have all the green freshness of 

 nature about them, in the books of the prophets. But 

 there is, perhaps, only one religion that could avail itself 

 of the feeling. It is well for the Mahommedan and the 

 Polytheist, who wish to remain such, that they confine 

 themselves, the one to his mosque, and the other to his 

 temple ; but he w r ho believes in the God of revelation 

 may look abroad on the glories of nature, and find no 

 discrepancy between the aspects of His character which 



