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    No . IV .

    t € We spend our years as a tale that is told . ' * Such is the fact on which a voice enlarged this day in yonder church . It is a fact , as that voice proved , in pointing out the indolence , the frivolity , the perverseness , of man : but I would now regard the fact under a different aspect . Round

    me is the scenery , within ken are the materials , within myself is the sequence , of a magnificent tale , whose aims are higher than vain amusement , and whose catastrophe can never pass away from the mind and be forgotten . Widely , almost inimitably , the prospect spreads , and my sense is well nigh bewildered when I regard it in detail . This heathy plot on which I lie , the ravine beside me , with its pines slanting over the water course , the

    craggy ridge behind , which crests these hills , are of themselves enough to satisfy the meditative spirit through many a long summer's day j and what have I besides ? I follow with my eye the steep chalk path by which I ascended , and see how it intersects many a sheep-track on the down , winds through many a field , diverges to farms , to cottages , and to yonder bright

    reach of the stream , till it is lost at the churchyard stile . And this is but a small section of the landscape . The dwellings clustered round the grey steeple shew but as one abode when compared with the lordly mansion near 5 and many such mansions rear their graceful fronts amidst their lawns and woods , glorious beneath the sloping sunbeams . Further and yet further spreads this vast plain , with its one distant eminence , behind which

    hangs the smoke of the city . Its cathedral towers alone stand out from the cloud ; and thus I have peaceful tidings of the inhabitants , —that they are dwellers beside a domestic hearth , and worshipers in a Christian temple . Beyond , the boundary which separates earth and sky is not discernible . Yes , that golden line which brightens every moment as the sun sinks to the

    horizon , marks where the eye must rest : There is Thames shedding his floods into the main , apparently losing the individuality which is elsewhere perpetually renewed . Is not this indeed the scenery of a magnificent tale ? And not only the scenery , but much of the material also . Much of our life is made of matter like this . What would this scene be to an infant ? A

    coloured surface , no more extensive , and perhaps less diversified , than the carpet of his nursery . He would stretch out his craving hand to yon burnished flood as to a picture frame on the walls . He would pass over the moving flocks that speckle the down , as smaller than the butterflies that flit above the heath blossoms on which he lies . I think I can remember

    something of this ; something of the confused notions of distance and proportion under which the world opens upon the young sense : and I do vividly remember the days , when , having surmounted my first ignorance and

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    ( 601 )

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    SABBATH MUSINGS .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1831, page 601, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2601/page/25/