many
common flowers, that seem to have planted themselves, and
the domestic honey-suckle carefully trained over the little
window. Around are all the common farm-house sounds,--the
poultry making a pleasant recitative between the carols of
singing birds; even geese and turkeys are not inharmonious
when modulated by the diapasons of the beach. The orchard of
very old apple-trees, whose twisted forms tell of the glorious
winds that have here held revelry, protects a little homely
garden, such as gives to me an indescribable refreshment,
where the undivided vegetable plots and flourishing young
fruit-trees, mingling carelessly, seem as if man had dropt the
seeds just where he wanted the plants, and they had sprung up
at once. The family, too, look, at first glance, well-suited
to the place,--homely, kindly, unoppressed, of honest pride
and mutual love, not unworthy to look out upon the far-shining
sea.

'Many, many sweet little things would I tell you, only they
are so very little. I feel just now as if I could live and die
here. I am out in the open air all the time, except about two
hours in the early morning. And now the moon is fairly gone
late in the evening. While she was here, we staid out, too.
Everything seems sweet here, so homely, so kindly; the old
people chatting so contentedly, the young men and girls
laughing together in the fields,--not vulgarly, but in the
true kinsfolk way,--little children singing in the house and
beneath the berry-bushes. The never-ceasing break of the
surf is a continual symphony, calming the spirits which this
delicious air might else exalt too much. Everything on the
beach becomes a picture; the casting the seine, the ploughing
the deep for seaweed. This, when they do it with horses, is
prettiest of all; but when you see the oxen in the surf, you
lose all faith in the story of Europa, as the gay waves tumble
in on their lazy sides. The bull would be a fine object on the
shore, but not, not in the water. Nothing short of a dolphin
will do! Late to-night, from the highest Paradise rocks,
seeing ---- wandering, and the horsemen careering on the
beach, so spectrally passing into nature, amid the pale,
brooding twilight, I almost thought myself in the land of
souls!

'But in the morning it is life, all cordial and common. This