A NIGHT-WALK. 349 



my pen, in digging my little garden and tending my 

 few goats. I have pictured to myself the snugness and 

 comfort of my little apartment in some boisterous night 

 of winter, when the winds would be howling over my 

 roof, and the rains pattering on my casement, trees 

 creaking, streams dashing, waves roaring, and the whole 

 heavens and the whole earth a scene of uproar and con- 

 tention. Within all would be quietness, except that 

 the flame would be rattling in the chimney, throwing 

 its cheerful reflection on my stool, my table, my little 

 cupboard, my few books, and my bed. Every season 

 was to have its own peculiar pleasures for me, and its 

 own particular study ; the phenomena of nature, the 

 \visdom of the poet, the workings of my own mind, 

 each, all of these, were to furnish me with employment. 

 And thus I was to spend my days, until at length death, 

 no very unwelcome visitor, would call in upon me, and 

 my cabin would become my grave. Such was the 

 dream of the boy, of one who had but just begun to 

 know life as it presents itself to the children of poverty 

 and labour, and who was not aware that the irrational 

 and inanimate worlds are much less interesting objects 

 of study than the world of men ; or that, by retiring 

 into one's own mind, one may become more completely 

 a hermit, than by retiring into a desert. I was em- 

 ployed in thinking of all this in my walk to-night ; in 

 calling up the various circumstances of my dream, and 

 in feeling, from an experience not a little strengthened 

 by the depression of the moment, how very fallacious 

 its promise of happiness. The best and strongest- 

 minded of us, my dear madam, cannot always be happy 

 in our own resources alone. We have all of us our 

 hours and days of languor and melancholy, when we 

 must look without ourselves for comfort. Seldom have 



