THE COUNTRY.


denly night falls like a curtain upon the world;
darkness shuts out these appalling distances,
and lifts the weight of consciousness from a
man's soul. To lie between the wrinkled roots
of a great tree in the soft sand, which is warm
still from the flood of the sun, and look through
the spread of the branches at the near and
kindly stars, is to fall again into content. Per-
haps it is the absence of mystery which is so
soothing. The skies reveal themselves in the
darkness, as they may not in the glare of day,
and the starlight, like a golden vapor, blurs
the endless files of the trees, so that they vanish
like ghosts a stone's-throw away, and the beie-
diction of darkness rests eyes which all day long
have been wearied by lines and numbers.

 There are clearings here and there in the
forest, where pines are being felled, and one
may lean against a shaft which shall soon be
rocking between the sky and sea, the mast
of a vessel, that will hold all the spars and
cordage, as the spine gathers the nerves and
muscles of a living man. There is a propriety