there is nothing in the world, short of the most undivided reciprocal
attachment, that has such power over the workings of the human heart
as the mild sweetness of nature. The most ruffled temper, when
emerging from the town, will subside into a calm at the sight of a
wide stretch of landscape reposing in the twilight of a fine evening.
It is then that the spirit of peace settles upon the heart, unfetters
the thoughts and elevates the soul to the Creator. It is then that we
behold the Parent of the universe in his works; we see his grandeur
in earth, sea, and sky: we feel his affection in the emotions which
they raise, and, half mortal, half etherealized, forget where we are,
in the anticipation of what that world must be of which this earth is
merely the shadow. [Footnote: This description of the banks of the
Vistula was given to me with smiles and sighs. The reality was once
enjoyed by the narrator, and there was a delight in the retrospection
"sweet and mournful to the soul." At the time these reflections arose
on such a scene, I often tasted the same pleasure in evening visits
to the beautiful rural environs of London, which then extended from
the north side of Fitzroy Square to beyond the Elm Grove on Primrose
Hill, and forward through the fields to Hampstead. But most of that
is all streets, or Regent's Park; and the sweet Hill, then the resort
of many a happy Sunday group, has not now a tree standing on it, and
hardly a blade of grass, "to mark where the primrose has been."]

"Autumn seemed to be unfolding all her beauties to greet the return
of the palatine. In one part the haymakers were mowing the hay and
heaping it into stacks; in another, the reapers were gathering up the
wheat, with a troop of rosy little gleaners behind them, each of whom
might have tempted the proudest Palemon in Christendom to have
changed her toil into 'a gentler duty.' Such a landscape intermingled
with the little farms of these honest people, whom the philanthropy