better than any thing we remember of the salmon kind, except
the inimitable grilses at Stirling.

On returning from the sale, with the carriage loaded with our
purchases, we disposed our new acquisitions in the different rooms,
and laid ourselves out for a few weeks' enjoyment of the blest
retirement--friend to life's decline--which we had struggled so hard
to gain, and which now looked so satisfying in every point.

There is nothing to be compared, for comfort and beauty, to a
dairy-farm. Arable lands are detestable; and the windows of the house
generally look into a horrible yard, where the present agonies of the
nose are made tolerable only by the hope of the rich crop to come.
Here our windows looked upon a sloping green field, bounded from the
road by a good thick hedge, at the distance of seventy or eighty
yards. Beyond the road stretched fine luxuriant meadows, each bordered
with its fence of noble elms, down to the river; so that we had
nothing to do but cross the road, and wander among fields and
hedgerows, miles and miles, either east or west--always within hearing
of the gentle voice of the Usk, and often in sight of the long, still
reaches of the river, that looked like beautiful lakes, fringed to the
water side with willows and flowering shrubs. Seventeen or eighteen
cows were our fellow-lodgers at the farm; and no sight is more
fascinating, especially if you are fond of warm milk, than the long
majestic march, and musical invocations, of the milky mothers, as they
come home at evening from the pastures. Before three days were over,
the names of all the cows were household words among the young ones;
their very voices were distinguished; and it was decided that the
flower of the flock, as to beauty, was Glo'ster, though some of us
stoutly maintained that the whiteness of Handsome entitled her to the
prize. Then there were about thirty sheep; but with them (in spite of
frequent intercourse) we could only make out a general acquaintance--for
we disbelieve altogether in the possibility of distinguishing one of
the flock from the others. It must be the easiest thing in the world
for a sheep to establish an _alibi_; and we are rather surprised that
the impossibility of detection does not encourage some of the bolder
of the woolly-sided heroes to some desperate outrage. There could be
no identifying the culprit. But we saw no instance of spirit among
them, except a wicked attempt on the part of a young lamb to