and new manners. Every person, every incident, every feeling,
touches and stirs the imagination. The restless mind creates
and observes at the same time. Indeed there is scarcely any
popular tenet more erroneous than that which holds that when
time is slow, life is dull. It is very often and very much
the reverse. If we look back on those passages of our life
which dwell most upon the memory, they are brief periods full
of action and novel sensation. Egremont found this so during
the first days of his new residence in Mowedale. The first
week, an epoch in his life, seemed an age; at the end of the
first month, he began to deplore the swiftness of time and
almost to moralize over the brevity of existence. He found
that he was leading a life of perfect happiness, but of
remarkable simplicity; he wished it might never end, but felt
difficulty in comprehending how in the first days of his
experience of it, it had seemed so strange; almost as strange
as it was sweet. The day that commenced early, was past in
reading--books lent him often too by Sybil Gerard--sometimes
in a ramble with her and Morley, who had time much at his
command, to some memorable spot in the neighbourhood, or in
the sport which the river and the rod secured Egremont. In
the evening, he invariably repaired to the cottage of Gerard,
beneath whose humble roof he found every female charm that can
fascinate, and conversation that stimulated his intelligence.
Gerard was ever the same; hearty, simple, with a depth of
feeling and native thought on the subjects on which they
touched, and with a certain grandeur of sentiment and
conception which contrasted with his social position, but
which became his idiosyncracy. Sybil spoke little, but hung
upon the accents of her father; yet ever and anon her rich