Parson.—“Pooh, pooh! I should like to see a woman who could have written that description of an August evening before a thunderstorm; every wildflower in the hedgerow exactly the flowers of August—every sign in the air exactly those of the month. Bless you! a woman would have filled the hedge with violets and cowslips. Nobody else but my friend Moss could have written that description.”
Squire.—“I don’t know; there’s a simile about the waste of corn-seed in hand-sowing, which makes me think he must be a farmer!”
Mrs. dale (scornfully).—“A farmer! In hob-nailed shoes, I suppose! I say it is a woman.”
Mrs. hazeldean.—“A woman, and a mother!”
Parson.—“A middle-aged man, and a naturalist.”
Squire.—“No, no, Parson; certainly a young man; for that love-scene puts me in mind of my own young days, when I would have given my ears to tell Harry how handsome I thought her; and all I could say was—‘Fine weather for the crops, Miss.’ Yes, a young man, and a farmer. I should not wonder if he had held the plow himself.”
Randal (who had been turning over the pages).—“This sketch of night in London comes from a man who has lived the life of cities, and looked at wealth with the eyes of poverty. Not bad! I will read the book.”
“Strange,” said the Parson, smiling, “that this little work should so have entered our minds, suggested to all of us different ideas, yet equally charmed all—given a new and fresh current to our dull country life—animated us as with the sight of a world in our breasts we had never seen before, save in dreams;—a little work like this, by a man we don’t know, and never may! Well, that knowledge is power, and a noble one!”
“A sort of power, certainly, sir,” said Randal, candidly; and that night, when Randal retired to his own room, he suspended his schemes and projects, and read, as he rarely did, without an object to gain by the reading.
The work surprised him by the pleasure it gave. Its charm lay in the writer’s calm enjoyment of the Beautiful. It seemed like some happy soul sunning itself in the light of its own thoughts. Its power was so tranquil and even, that it was only a critic who could perceive how much force and vigor were necessary to sustain the wing that floated aloft with so imperceptible an effort. There was no one faculty predominating tyrannically over the others; all seemed proportioned in the felicitous symmetry of a nature rounded, integral, and complete. And when the work was closed, it left behind it a tender warmth that played round the heart of the reader, and vivified feelings that seemed unknown before. Randal laid down the book softly; and for five minutes the ignoble and base purposes to which his own knowledge was applied, stood before him, naked and unmasked.