usual driver, and beholding me coming in my usual dress out at the
usual door, it struck me that their recollection of my having been
absent for any unusual time was at once cancelled. They behaved
(they are both young dogs) exactly in their usual manner; coming
behind the basket phaeton as we trotted along, and lifting their
heads to have their ears pulled,--a special attention which they
receive from no one else. But when I drove into the stable-yard,
Linda (the St. Bernard) was greatly excited; weeping profusely, and
throwing herself on her back that she might caress my foot with her
great fore-paws. M----'s little dog too, Mrs. Bouncer, barked in the
greatest agitation on being called down and asked by M----, "Who is
this?" and tore round and round me, like the dog in the Faust
outlines. You must know that all the farmers turned out on the road
in their market-chaises to say, "Welcome home, sir!" that all the
houses along the road were dressed with flags; and that our
servants, to cut out the rest, had dressed this house so, that every
brick of it was hidden. They had asked M----'s permission to "ring
the alarm-bell (!) when master drove up"; but M----, having some
slight idea that that compliment might awaken master's sense of the
ludicrous, had recommended bell abstinence. But on Sunday, the
village choir (which includes the bell-ringers) made amends. After
some unusually brief pious reflection in the crowns of their hats at
the end of the sermon, the ringers bolted out and rang like mad
until I got home. (There had been a conspiracy among the villagers
to take the horse out, if I had come to our own station, and draw me
here. M---- and G---- had got wind of it and warned me.)

Divers birds sing here all day, and the nightingales all night. The
place is lovely, and in perfect order. I have put five mirrors in
the Swiss Chalet (where I write), and they reflect and refract in
all kinds of ways the leaves that are quivering at the windows, and
he great fields of waving corn, and the sail-dotted river. My room
is up among the branches of the trees; and the birds and the
butterflies fly in and out, and the green branches shoot in, at the
open windows, and the lights and shadows of the clouds come and go
with the rest of the company. The scent of the flowers, and indeed
of ever