Page:Tales of my landlord (Volume 4).djvu/275

 course for a moment? There is a sea to receive thee in its bosom, and an eternity for man when his fretful and hasty course through the vale of time shall be ceased and over. What thy petty fuming is to the deep and vast billows of a shoreless ocean, are our cares, hopes, fears, joys, and sorrows, to the objects which must occupy us through the awful and boundless succession of ages!"

Thus, moralizing, he passed on till the dell opened, and the banks, receding from the brook, left a little green vale, exhibiting a croft, or small field, on which some corn was growing, and a cottage, whose walls were not above five feet high, and whose thatched roof, green with moisture, age, house-leek, and grass, had in some places suffered damage from the encroachment of two cows, whose appetite this appearance of verdure had diverted from their more legitimate pasture. An ill-spelled, and worse written inscription, intimated to the traveller that he might here find