It was between ten and eleven o'clock at night, the hour when quiet people think of undressing and going to bed, and when the gay world of London begins to turn its mind to dressing and going out to seek amusement. A drizzling rain was falling, falling coldly, as it falls in early spring, when the wind is in the east; and you might have heard it fitfully sighing and wailing, had it not been for the monotonous roll of wheels upon the pavement, which, save for an hour or two of the night, seldom gives the ear a truce, even for a few short moments. People who habitually live in towns are apt to find the quiet of the country act as a damper on their spirits; but, on the other hand, I believe that those who are used to its deep peace and silence are not seldom impressed with a feeling of melancholy by these never-ceasing tokens of the stir of a world with which they have no connection, and which takes no interest in them. Nature, in whose loving presence they have more or less consciously lived, is shut out, and they are shut in with a world which they know not, and which knows not them.