looks as if it
had just got out of bed, and had not finished its toilet. The glowing
green of everything strikes me: green hedges in place of our
rail-fences, always ugly, and our rude stone-walls, which are not
wanting in a certain look of fitness approaching to comeliness, and are
really picturesque when lichen-coated, but poor features of landscape as
compared to these universal hedges. I am disappointed in the trees, so
far; I have not seen one large tree as yet. Most of those I see are of
very moderate dimensions, feathered all the way up their long slender
trunks, with a lop-sided mop of leaves at the top, like a wig which has
slipped awry. I trust that I am not finding everything _couleur de
rose_; but I certainly do find the cheeks of children and young
persons of such brilliant rosy hue as I do not remember that I have ever
seen before. I am almost ready to think this and that child's face has
been colored from a pink saucer. If the Saxon youth exposed for sale at
Rome, in the days of Pope Gregory the Great, had complexions like these
children, no wonder that the pontiff exclaimed, Not _Angli_, but
_angeli_! All this may sound a little extravagant, but I am giving
my impressions without any intentional exaggeration. How far these first
impressions may be modified by after-experiences there will be time
enough to find out and to tell. It is better to set them down at once
just as they are. A first impression is one never to be repeated; the
second look will see much that was not noticed before, but it will not
reproduce the sharp lines of the _first proof_, which is always
interesting, no matter what the eye or the mind fixes upon. "I see men
as trees walking." That first experience could not be mended. When
Dickens landed in Boston, he was struck with the brightness of all the
objects he saw,--buildings, signs, and so forth. When I landed in
Liverpool, everything looked very dark, very dingy, very massive, in the
streets I drove through. So in London, but in a week it all seemed
natural enough.

We got to the hotel where we had engaged quarters, at eleven o'clock in
the evening of Wednesday, the 12th of May. Everything was ready for
us,--a bright fire blazing and supper waiting. When we came to look at
the accommodations, we found they were not at all adapted to our needs.
It was impossible to stay there another night. So early the next morning
we sent out our courier-maid, a dove from the ark, to find us a pl