ildren's nursery after putting them to bed in the dark, that they
might sleep, I felt gradually the spirit of life come over the earth, in
cool breezes between the heavy showers of rain. The next morning the
thermometer was below 70 deg., 30 deg. lower than the day before.... This
morning the children took me up a hill which rises immediately at the
back of the house, on the summit of which is a fine crest of beautiful
forest-trees, from which place there is a charming prospect of hill and
dale, a rich rolling country in fine cultivation--the yellow crops of
grain, running like golden bays into the green woodland that clothes the
sides and tops of all the hills, the wheat, the grass, the oats, and the
maize, all making different checkers in the pretty variegated patchwork
covering of the prosperous summer earth.

The scattered farmhouses glimmered white from among the round-headed
verdure of their neighboring orchards. Nowhere in the bright panorama
did the eye encounter the village, the manor-house, and the church
spire,--that picturesque poetical group of feudal significance; but
everywhere, the small lonely farmhouse, with its accompaniments of huge
barns and outhouses, ugly the one and ungainly the others, but standing
in the midst of their own smiling well-cultivated territory, a type of
independent republicanism, perhaps the pleasantest type of its
pleasantest features.

In the whole scene there was nothing picturesque or poetical (except,
indeed, the blue glorious expanse of the unclouded sky, and the noble
trees, from the protection of whose broad shade we looked forth upon the
sunny world). But the wide landscape had a peaceful, plenteous,
prosperous aspect, that was comfortable to one's spirit and exceedingly
pleasant to the eye.

After our walk we came down into the valley, and I went with the
children to the cold bath--a beautiful deep spring of water, as clear as
crystal and almost as cold as ice, surrounded by whitewashed walls,
which, rising above it to a discreet height, screen it only from earthly
observers. No roof covers the watery chamber but the green spreading
branches of tall trees and the blue summer sky, into which you seem to
be stepping as you disturb the surface of the water. Into this lucid
liquid gem I gave my chickens and myself, overhead, three breathless
dips--it is too cold to do more,--and since that I have done nothing
but write to you.

You ask what is said to Sydney Smith's "pet