Yet all in the broad high-way of the world. Now there's a grave-your foot is half upon it,

It looks just like the rest; and yet that Man

Died broken-hearted.

LEONARD.

'Tis a common case.

We'll take another: who is he that lies

Beneath yon ridge, the last of those three graves? It touches on that piece of native rock

Left in the church-yard wall.

PRIEST.

That's Walter Ewbank.

He had as white a head and fresh a cheek
As ever were produced by youth and age
Engendering in the blood of hale fourscore.
For five long generations had the heart
Of Walter's forefathers o'erflowed the bounds
Of their inheritance, that single cottage,—
You see it yonder!—and those few green fields.
They toiled and wrought, and still, from Sire to Son,

Each struggled, and each yielded as before
A little-yet a little-and old Walter,
They left to him the family heart, and land
With other burthens than the crop it bore.
Year after year the old man still kept up
A cheerful mind, and buffeted with bond,
Interest and mortgages; at last he sank,
And went into his grave before his time.
Poor Walter! whether it was care that spurred him
God only knows, but to the very last

He had the lightest foot in Ennerdale :
His pace was never that of an old man :

I almost see him tripping down the path
With his two Grandsons after him-but You,
Unless our Landlord be your host to-night,
Have far to travel, and in these rough paths
Even in the longest day of midsummer-

LEONARD.

But these two Orphans!

PRIEST.

Orphans! Such they were

Yet not while Walter lived-for, though their pa

rents

Lay buried side by side as now they lie,

The old Man was a father to the boys,

Two fathers in one father : and if tears,

Shed when he talked of them where they were not," And hauntings from the infirmity of love,

Are aught of what makes up a mother's heart,

This old Man in the day of his old age

Was half a mother to them.-If you weep, Sir,
To hear a Stranger talking about Strangers,
Heaven bless you when you are among your kin
died!

Aye. You may turn that way-it is a grave
Which will bear looking at.

LEONARD.

These Boys-1 hope

They loved this good old Man ?—

PRIEST.

'They did-and truly:

But that was what we almost overlooked,

They were such darlings of each other. For

Though from their cradles they had lived with

Walter,

The only Kinsman near them in the house,
Yet he being old, they had much love to spare,
And it all went into each other's hearts.

Leonard, the elder by just eighteen months,
Was two years taller: 'twas a joy to see,

To hear, to meet them! from their house the School
Was distant three short miles-and in the time

Of storm and thaw, when every water-course

And unbridged stream, such as you may have noticed

Crossing our roads at every hundred steps,
Was swoln into a noisy rivulet,

Would Leonard then, when elder boys perhaps
Remained at home, gostaggering through the fords
Bearing his Brother on his back. I've seen him,
On windy days, in one of those stray brooks,
Aye, more than once I've seen him mid-leg deep,

Their two books lying both on a dry stone
Upon the hither side: and once I said,
As I remember, looking round these rocks
And hills on which we all of us were born,

That God who made the great book of the world i
Would bless such piety-

Never did worthier lads break English bread!

The finest Sunday that the Autumn saw,
With all its mealy clusters of ripe nuts,
Could never keep these boys away from church,
Or tempt them to an hour of sabbath breach.
Leonard and James! I warrant, every corner
Among these rocks, and every hollow place
Where foot could come, to one or both of them
Was known as well as to the flowers that grow

there.

Like Roe-bucks they went bounding o'er the hills: