as these had faded, his natural tone of mind resumed its vigour; misanthropy, with all its sour concomitants, departed; he looked back to nothing of the past except to the classic studies of his youth; his books recalled to him the only race of humankind he wished to recollect; even the wholesome teaching of experience, because it brought the base-minded again upon the foreground, was sought to be obliterated. My good uncle!-I see him now bending forward his patriarchal head, thoughts full of kindness legible in his eye-Can I do justice to the benevolence which knew better how to suffer than to witness pain! the self denial practised to encrease the store from which our ragged neighbours were relieved! My uncle could not hate, he could not even be unkind; his nature wanted the incitement. For every child he had a friendly nod, a halfpenny. The very churl would wear a gracious look before him, cheated into courteousness by a face that wore "The lineaments of gospel books." Every thing connected with my uncle in his mountain home is fresh and prominent-even his old high-backed chair, with each feature of its curious carved work, I can call forth to seat him in-his study chair-the back of which we used to climb, and stroke his head, and turn it from the Median wars to notice our mock combats. In after days grown more sedate, taught not from reproof-to understand his silent wave, how we would steal each to a favorite nook in this our favorite room, and softly drawing forth a volume, (oftimes a folio more weighty than ourselves) would soon become as rapt in bye-gone days as he was, as intimate with buried heroes, poets, and philosophers. This study was the scene of noiseless and supreme delight, our port of refuge from Quinilla's clatter, our self-awarded little Goshen. Nor was our studious turn extraordinary: we were children of the rocks and wilds; our tendencies, training, and habits were peculiar; we never saw a toy, we scarcely knew the meaning of accomplishments; we were quite indifferent to the form and texture of our raiment, whether it were coarse or fine, suitable or unbecoming; we had no one to compete with; between us and the natives of our glen there was just the grade which separates the rustic from the clown. Of artificial life we knew no more than what the mimic images in antiquated books displayed to us, or what Quinilla's livelier images at times revealed. We learned just what we wished to learn, and no more; we were never tasked, never praised, at least for our acquirements. Our scripture teaching was not forced and of necessity; it was never made unamiable by penance. Books became our load-stars simply from the unalloyed enjoyment they afforded, other sources of a child's amusement finding no path to our retirement. Our library was not exclusively a temple for the ancients, albeit the fairest portion of it was allotted to my oracles. Some moderns, mostly English of the Elizabethan age or earlier, had, rather from accident than from good will, found entrance there; and, like intruders, had been assigned a stinted lodgment in a neglected corner, piled between the top shelf and the ceiling. They were eleemosynary guests— in L mates on mere tolerance-visited only by the moths, until Helen, rather at issue with my philosophy, sought out some clearer system to arrive at truth, and in her voyage of research lighted on the "black letter region." Curiously examining the long slighted occupants she selected some which were promptly located in a freer quarter, thenceforward her sacrarium. Marion, who had not a particle of taste for any thing in classic story, unless it were for Socrates' familiar genius, scized upon the tomes rejected by her sister. Her shriek of rapture startled my uncle, then planning with Xenophon the retreat of the ten thousand, and tumbled me from Helicon. Chronicles of Ireland, some in a garb so stiff and antiquated that none but so attached a devotee could have desired their acquaintance; legends in vellum of our Scythic ancestors, glossaries and itineraries with marvellous addenda; an Irish bible of 1681; an Ossian, (the most modern and best dressed of the party,) a well thumbed Shakspeare; Josephus, the Fairie Queen, and Spenser's state of Ireland; curious annals, Bardic traditions, and, above all, a copious dis |