Chamberss Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 | Page 9

distance. Fields, meadows, a shady lane, a brook, and the
Welsh mountains for a background, formed the picture of beauty that
attracted the stranger. There was hardly what could be called a street.
The cottages were clustered upon the side of the wooded bank above
the stream, shrouded in gardens of apple-trees; but there was space near
the foot of the hill for a green of rather handsome size, with a plane-tree
in the middle of it, and a few small shops along one side. Opposite the
shops was the inn, the doctor's house, the market-house, and a public
reading-room; and a bylane led from the green up towards the
church--an old, low-walled, steep-roofed building, with a square,
dumpy tower, in which hung a peal of bells, and where was placed a
large, round, clumsy window. A clump of hardwood trees enclosed the
upper end of the church-yard, and extended to the back of the rector's
garden, quite concealing his many-gabled dwelling. In a still, summer
evening, the brook could be heard from the parlour windows of the
rectory, dancing merrily along to its own music; and at those less
pleasant seasons when the foliage was scanty, it could be seen here and
there between the boles of the trees, sparkling in the sunshine as it
rippled on, while glimpses of the rich plain beyond added to the
harmony of the prospect.
The society of the village and its immediate neighbourhood was of a
humble kind--neither the rich nor the great were members of it; yet
there were wisdom, and prudence, and talent, and good faith to be

found in this little community, where all inclined to live as brethren,
kindly together. It was not a bad school this for the young to grow up in.
The rector's family had here been trained; and when they grew to rise
beyond it, and then passed out upon the wider world, those of them that
were again heard of in their birthplace, did no discredit to its name: and
all passed out, all but two--our two sisters. It is said adversity must at
some time reach us all: it had been late in visiting them, for they had
passed a happy youth in that quiet parsonage. At last, sorrow came, and
they were left alone, the two extremes of the chain which had bound
the little household together--all the intermediate links had broken; and
when, upon their father's death, they had to quit their long-loved home,
they found themselves verging upon old age, in circumstances that
natures less strictly disciplined would have felt to have been at the least
dreary. The younger sister was slightly deformed, and very delicate; the
elder, though still an active woman, was quite beyond the middle of life;
the income of the two, just L.30--no great elements these of either
usefulness or happiness. Let us see, then, what was made of them.
Some relations pressed the sisters to share their distant home, but they
would not leave the village. They felt as if their work lay there. The
friends they knew best were all around them; the occupations they had
been used to still remained to them; the memory of all they had loved
there clung to them, in the old haunts so doubly dear to the bereaved
who bear affliction patiently. So they moved only to a cottage a little
higher up the hill, yet within view of the church, and of the dear old
house, with its garden, sheltering wood, and pleasant rivulet; and there
they lived in comfort, with enough to use and much to spare, their cruse
never failing them when wanted. It was a real cottage, which a labourer
had left: there was no ornament about it till they added some. Rude and
unfashioned did this low-thatched cabin pass to them; it was their own
hands, with very little help from their light purse, which made of a
mere hovel the prettiest of rural dwellings--her own hands, indeed; for
Sister Anne alone was the working-bee. Sister Catherine helped by
hints and smiles, and by her nimble needle; but for out-of-doors labour
she had not strength. Sister Anne nailed up the trellised porch, over
which gay creepers were in time to grow. Sister Anne laid out the beds
of flowers, protected by a low paling from the sheep which pastured on
the downs. She planned the tidy bit of garden on one side, and the little

yard behind, where pig and poultry throve; but Sister Catherine
watched the bee-hives near the hawthorn hedge, and plied her busy
fingers by the hour to decorate the inside of their pretty cottage. They
almost acted man and wife in the division of their employments, and
with the best effect.
It would have astonished any one unaccustomed to the