Page:Paul Clifford Vol 2.djvu/164

156 over the empty streets; and in the sky, which was cloudless and transparently clear, the stars came gradually out one by one, until,

Beautiful evening! (if we, as well as Augustus Tomlinson, may indulge in an apostrophe,)—Beautiful evening! for thee all poets have had a song, and surrounded thee with rills and waterfalls, and dews, and flowers, and sheep, and bats, and melancholy, and owls; yet we must confess that to us, who in this very sentimental age are a bustling, worldly, hard-minded person, jostling our neighbours, and thinking of the main chance;—to us, thou art never so charming, as when we meet thee walking in thy gray hood, through the emptying streets, and among the dying sounds of a city. We love to feel the stillness, where all, two hours back, was clamour. We love to see the dingy abodes of Trade and Luxury, those restless patients of earth's constant fever, contrasted and