for my pleasures. I blend with those enjoyments
that of some chosen books, which teach me to become better. They make that
world, which I have abandoned, still contribute to my satisfaction. They
place before me pictures of those passions which render its inhabitants so
miserable; and the comparison which I make between their destiny and my
own, leads me to feel a sort of negative happiness. Like a man whom
shipwreck has thrown upon a rock, I contemplate, from my solitude, the
storms which roll over the rest of the world; and my repose seems more
profound from the distant sounds of the tempest.

"I suffer myself to be led calmly down the stream of time to the ocean of
futurity, which has no boundaries; while, in the contemplation of the
present harmony of nature, I raise my soul towards its supreme Author, and
hope for a more happy destiny in another state of existence.

"Although you do not descry my hermitage, which is situated in the midst of
a forest, among that immense variety of objects which this elevated spot
presents, the grounds are disposed with particular beauty, at least to one
who, like me, loves rather the seclusion of a home scene, than great and
extensive prospects. The river which glides before my door passes in a
straight line across the woods, and appears like a long canal shaded by
trees of all kinds. There are black date plum trees, what we here call the
narrow-leaved dodonea, olive wood, gum trees, and the cinnamon tree; while
in some parts the cabbage trees raise their naked columns more than a
hundred feet high, crowned at their summits with clustering leaves, and
towering above the wood like one forest piled upon another. Lianas, of
various foliage, intertwining among the woods, form arcades of flowers, and
verdant canopies; those trees, for the most part, shed aromatic odours of a
nature so powerful, that the garments of a traveller, who has passed
through the forest, retain for several hours the delicious fragrance. In
the season when those trees produce their lavish blossoms, they appear as
if covered with snow. One of the principal ornaments of our woods is the
calbassia, a tree not only distinguished for its beautiful tint of verdure;
but for other properties, which Madame de la Tour has described in the
following sonnet, written at one of her first visits to my hermitage:

SONNET

TO THE CALBASSIA TREE

Sublime Calbassia, luxuriant tree!
How soft the gloom thy br