have
no care for him at your heart,--tell me, Violante, though you are all
alone, with the flowers below, and the birds singing overhead, do you
feel that life itself is happiness or sorrow?"

"Happiness!" answered Violante, half shutting her eyes, and in a
measured voice.

"Can you explain what kind of happiness it is?"

"Oh, no, impossible! and it is never the same. Sometimes it is so
still--so still, and sometimes so joyous, that I long for wings to fly
up to God, and thank Him!"

"O friend," said the parson, "this is the true sympathy between life and
nature, and thus we should feel ever, did we take more care to preserve
the health and innocence of a child. We are told that we must become as
children to enter into the kingdom of Heaven; methinks we should also
become as children to know what delight there is in our heritage of
earth!"

CHAPTER XVII.

The maid-servant (for Jackeymo was in the fields) brought the table
under the awning, and with the English luxury of tea, there were other
drinks as cheap and as grateful on summer evenings,--drinks
which Jackeymo had retained and taught from the customs of the
South,--unebriate liquors, pressed from cooling fruits, sweetened with
honey, and deliciously iced: ice should cost nothing in a country in
which one is frozen up half the year! And Jackeymo, too, had added to
our good, solid, heavy English bread preparations of wheat much lighter,
and more propitious to digestion,--with those crisp grissins, which seem
to enjoy being eaten, they make so pleasant a noise between one's teeth.

The parson esteemed it a little treat to drink tea with the Riccaboccas.
There was something of elegance and grace in that homely meal at the
poor exile's table, which pleased the eye as well as taste. And the very
utensils, plain Wedgwood though they were, had a classical simplicity,
which made Mrs. Hazeldean's old India delf, and Mrs. Dale's best
Worcester china, look tawdry and barbarous in comparison. For it was
Flaxman who gave designs to Wedgwood, and the most truly refined of all
our manufactures in porcelain (if we do not look to the mere material)
is in the reach of the most thrifty.

The little banquet was at first rather a silent one; but Riccabocca
threw off his gloom, and became gay and animated. Then poor Mrs.
Riccabocca smiled, and pressed the grissins; and Violante, forgetting
all her stateliness, laughed and played tricks on the parson, stealing
away his cu