corn fields, with here and
there a little white cottage, embosomed in trees, are finely contrasted
with the awful and impassable fells which contain it.

An inconsiderable but impetuous river rushes from the mountains above,
through this unadorned but enchanting little valley, and passes through
the park at the distance of about a hundred yards from the house. The
ground falls beautifully down to it; and on the other side is a fine
wood of birch overhanging the river, which is here crossed by a small
rustic bridge; after being enlarged by many streams from the neighboring
hills, it runs about half a mile to the lake below, which, from the
front of the house, is seen in full beauty. It is a noble expanse of
water. The mountains that surround it are some of them covered with
wood, some skirted with cultivation, some rocky and barren to the
water's edge; while the rugged summits of them all present every variety
of fantastic outline. Toward the head of the lake a neat little village
ornaments the banks, and wonderfully harmonizes with the simple beauty
of the scene. At an opening among the hills, a view is caught of the
distant country, a wide vale richly wooded, adorned everywhere with
towns, villages, and gentlemen's houses, and backed by sublime
mountains, rivaling in height, though not in their broken and Alpine
forms, those that more immediately surround us.

While I was thus dividing my time between the enjoyment of this
exquisite scenery, my books, the care of my affairs, my filial
attentions, and my religious duties, I was suddenly deprived of my
inestimable mother. She died the death of the righteous.

Addison has finely touched on the singular sort of delicate and refined
tenderness of a father for a daughter: but I am persuaded that there is
no affection of the human heart more exquisitely pure than that which is
felt by a grateful son toward a mother who fostered his infancy with
fondness, watched over his childhood with anxiety, and his youth with an
interest compounded of all that is tender, wise, and pious.

My retirement was now become solitude: the former is, I believe, the
best state for the mind of man, the latter almost the worst. In
complete solitude the eye wants objects, the heart wants attachments,
the understanding wants reciprocation. The character loses its
tenderness when it has nothing to love, its firmness when it has none to
strengthen it, its sweetness when it has nothing to soothe it; it