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    designed for universality , enjoy the sympathy of all their race in their own best pleasures . Fain would the solitary muser amid the hills believe that the dwellers above and around him thought as he thinks , and felt as he feels . But it cannot be . The more I watch what is doing in this abode beside me , and the more distinctly the tones of its inmates reach me , the

    more certain I am that , though blessed , it is not with the highest kind of blessing ; and that this Sabbath eve , so full of solemn joy to some , is to them only the close of a day of rest . What an abode it is ! If I did not know it to have been prepared for the luxury of those who seek the pleasures of nature in company , I should have imagined it built for the retreat of the philosopher . If I did not-know it to be the charge of a peasant ' s

    family , I should have looked for an inhabitant of a different class—for a world-wearied or nature-loving recluse . How its bold front springs abruptly from the rock , while its projecting thatch is made to send the summer rain pattering among the pebbles far below ! How snugly is it sheltered by the larch-plantation on either side , and its wall-flowers—is there any other place where they grow so abundantly ? The rock is tufted with

    them in every crevice ; they spring from every ledge , and fringe every projection . And what are the dwellers in this summer-house ; the woodranger , and his wife and babe ? They look happy , but they are heedless of what is before their eyes . They have possessed themselves of the best window , as if it were their Sunday privilege to monopolize the pleasures which their superiors eagerly seek on every other day . But what avails their privileged seat to them ?^ That man's brow is such as should betoken high capabilities ; yet , with this scene before him , he amuses himself with provoking the bayings of his mastiff . What mother with her infant in her lap , can be insensible to maternal cares ? Yet there is one who heeds not her babe , and who has no such intelligence in her wandering gaze as might account for the neglect . Why should not these , pupils , like the wise , of nature and of man , bred up like the wise in the knowledge of the gospel , feel the full beauty and solemnity of a scene like this ? Nature has been

    ready to do her part ; the gospel can never fail ; it is man who has stinted what he ought to have cherished , and perverted the energies which it was his office to controul . It is through evil social influences that the eyes of

    such as these are turned from beholding the stars when , as now , they first glimmer through the twilight , and that their ears are closed to the soothing tones of the night winds , as they come hither from their rovings over land and sea . It is the crime of society , also , that evils exist , compared with which this

    insensibility is virtue . In that shadowy wood below , there was done , but a few days since , an act whose guilt and agony made the place for the moment a hell . The murder of a child , for the sake of the purse he carried , is . a crime whose atrocity and utter folly alike ' shew that society has neglected its duty of instructing every one that is bora into it in the pur-

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    604 Sabbath Musings *

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1831, page 604, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2601/page/28/