d several cows grazing in the
pasture-land; and when he had taken a few steps towards the water, he
saw a little house built of granite and roofed with shingle in the spot
where the meadowland was at its widest. The roof of this little cottage
harmonized with everything about it; for it had long been overgrown with
ivy, moss, and flowers of no recent date. A thin smoke, that did not
scare the birds away, went up from the dilapidated chimney. There was a
great bench at the door between two huge honey-suckle bushes, that were
pink with blossom and full of scent. The walls could scarcely be seen
for branches of vine and sprays of rose and jessamine that interlaced
and grew entirely as chance and their own will bade them; for the
inmates of the cottage seemed to pay no attention to the growth which
adorned their house, and to take no care of it, leaving to it the fresh
capricious charm of nature.

Some clothes spread out on the gooseberry bushes were drying in the
sun. A cat was sitting on a machine for stripping hemp; beneath it lay a
newly scoured brass caldron, among a quantity of potato-parings. On
the other side of the house Raphael saw a sort of barricade of dead
thorn-bushes, meant no doubt to keep the poultry from scratching up
the vegetables and pot-herbs. It seemed like the end of the earth. The
dwelling was like some bird's-nest ingeniously set in a cranny of the
rocks, a clever and at the same time a careless bit of workmanship. A
simple and kindly nature lay round about it; its rusticity was genuine,
but there was a charm like that of poetry in it; for it grew and throve
at a thousand miles' distance from our elaborate and conventional
poetry. It was like none of our conceptions; it was a spontaneous
growth, a masterpiece due to chance.

As Raphael reached the place, the sunlight fell across it from right to
left, bringing out all the colors of its plants and trees; the yellowish
or gray bases of the crags, the different shades of the green leaves,
the masses of flowers, pink, blue, or white, the climbing plants
with their bell-like blossoms, and the shot velvet of the mosses, the
purple-tinted blooms of the heather,--everything was either brought
into relief or made fairer yet by the enchantment of the light or by the
contrasting shadows; and this was the case most of all with the sheet of
water, wherein the house, the trees, the granite peaks, and the sky were
all faithfully reflected. Everything had a radia