When God dramatizes, when nations
act, or all the human kind conspire to educe the vast catastrophe, men
sleep and snore, and let the busy scene go on, unlocked, unthought
upon.... It is my object then, not to withdraw the young from pleasure,
but from unworthy pleasures; not to lessen their enjoyments, but to
increase them, by rejecting the counterfeit and the vile.
* * * * *
From "Norwood."
=_50._= LIFE IN THE COUNTRY.
It was this union of seclusion and publicity that made Norwood a place
of favorite resort, through the summer, of artists, of languid scholars,
and of persons of quiet tastes. There was company for all that shunned
solitude, and solitude for all that were weary of company. Each house
was secluded from its neighbor. Yards and gardens full of trees and
shrubbery, the streets lined with venerable trees, gave the town at a
little distance the appearance of having been built in an orchard or a
forest-park. A few steps and you could be alone--a few steps too would
bring you among crowds. Where else could one watch the gentle conflict
between sounds and silence with such dreamy joy?--or make idleness seem
so nearly like meditation?--or more nimbly chase the dreams of night
with even brighter day-dreams, wondering every day what has become of
the day before, and each week where the week has gone, and in autumn
what has become of the summer, that trod so noiselessly that none knew
how swift were its footsteps! The town filled by July, and was not empty
again till late October.
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