elf to these. Hark! there are the bells
of Bourron (the wind is in the north, it will be fair). How clear and
airy is the sound. The nerves are harmonised and quieted; the mind
attuned to silence; and observe how easily and regularly beats the heart!
Your unenlightened doctor would see nothing in these sensations; and yet
you yourself perceive they are a part of health. Did you remember your
cinchona this morning? Good. Cinchona also is a work of nature; it is,
after all, only the bark of a tree which we might gather for ourselves if
we lived in the locality. What a world is this! Though a professed
atheist, I delight to bear my testimony to the world. Look at the
gratuitous remedies and pleasures that surround our path! The river runs
by the garden end, our bath, our fish-pond, our natural system of
drainage. There is a well in the court which sends up sparkling water
from the earth's very heart, clean, cool, and, with a little wine, most
wholesome. The district is notorious for its salubrity; rheumatism is the
only prevalent complaint, and I myself have never had a touch of it. I
tell you--and my opinion is based upon the coldest, clearest processes of
reason--if I, if you, desired to leave this home of pleasures, it would
be the duty, it would be the privilege, of our best friend to prevent us
with a pistol bullet."

One beautiful June day they sat upon the hill outside the village. The
river, as blue as heaven, shone here and there among the foliage. The
indefatigable birds turned and flickered about Gretz church-tower. A
healthy wind blew from over the forest, and the sound of innumerable
thousands of tree-tops and innumerable millions on millions of green
leaves was abroad in the air, and filled the ear with something between
whispered speech and singing. It seemed as if every blade of grass must
hide a cigale; and the fields rang merrily with their music, jingling far
and near as with the sleigh-bells of the fairy queen. From their station
on the slope the eye embraced a large space of poplared plain upon the
one hand, the waving hill-tops of the forest on the other, and Gretz
itself in the middle, a handful of roofs. Under the bestriding arch of
the blue heavens, the place seemed dwindled to a toy. It seemed
incredible that people dwelt, and could find room to turn or air to
breathe, in such a corner of the world. The thought came home to the boy,
perhaps for the first time, and he gave it words.

"How small it