are spread,
  And the lamb browses by the linnet’s bed;
  Then ’cross the bounding brook they make their way
  O’er its rough bridge—­’and there behold the bay!—­
  The ocean smiling to the fervid sun—­
  The waves that faintly fall and slowly run—­
  The ships at distance and the boats at hand,
  And now they walk upon the sea-side sand,
  Counting the number, and what kind they be,
  Ships softly sinking in the sleepy sea: 
  Now arm in arm, now parted, they behold
  The glittering waters on the shingles rolled;
  The timid girls, half dreading their design,
  Dip the small foot in the retarded brine,
  And search for crimson weeds, which spreading flow,
  Or lie like pictures on the sand below: 
  With all those bright red pebbles, that the sun,
  Through the small waves so softly shines upon;
  And those live lucid jellies which the eye
  Delights to trace as they swim glittering by: 
  Pearl-shells and rubied star-fish they admire,
  And will arrange above the parlour fire,—­
  Tokens of bliss!—­’Oh! horrible! a wave
  Roars as it rises—­save me, Edward! save!’
  She cries:—­Alas! the watchman on his way
  Calls and lets in—­truth, terror, and the day!”

Allowing for a certain melodramatic climax here led up to, we cannot deny the impressiveness of this picture—­the first-hand quality of its observation, and an eye for beauty, which his critics are rarely disposed to allow to Crabbe.  A narrative of equal pathos, and once equally celebrated, is that of the village-girl who receives back her sailor-lover from his last voyage, only to watch over his dying hours.  It is in an earlier section (No. ii. The Church), beginning: 

  “Yes! there are real mourners—­I have seen
  A fair sad girl, mild, suffering, and serene,”

too long to quote in full, and, as with Crabbe’s method generally, not admitting of being fairly represented by extracts.  Then there are sketches of character in quite a different vein, such as the vicar, evidently drawn from life.  He is the good easy man, popular with the ladies for a kind of fade complimentary style in which he excels; the man of “mild benevolence,” strongly opposed to every thing new: 

  “Habit with him was all the test of truth: 
  ‘It must be right:  I’ve done it from my youth,’
  Questions he answered in as brief a way: 
  ‘It must be wrong—­it was of yesterday.’”

Feeble good-nature, and selfish unwillingness to disturb any existing habits or conventions, make up his character: 

  “In him his flock found nothing to condemn;
  Him sectaries liked—­he never troubled them: 
  No trifles failed his yielding mind to please,
  And all his passions sunk in early ease;
  Nor one so old has left this world of sin,
  More like the being that he entered in.”