root, and trickles over the grass, bright and silent as the dew in a
May morning. The wood-pigeons (who are just returned from their summer
migration, and are cropping the ivy berries) add their low cooings, the
very note of love, to the slight fluttering of the falling leaves in the
quiet air, giving a voice to the sunshine and the beauty. This coppice
is a place to live and die in. But we must go. And how fine is the
ascent which leads us again into the world, past those cottages hidden
as in a pit, and by that hanging orchard and that rough heathy bank! The
scenery in this one spot has a wildness, an abruptness of rise and fall,
rare in any part of England, rare above all in this rich and lovely but
monotonous county. It is Switzerland in miniature.

And now we cross the hill to pay a morning visit to the family at the
great house,--another fine place, commanding another fine sweep of
country. The park, studded with old trees, and sinking gently into
a valley, rich in wood and water, is in the best style of ornamental
landscape, though more according to the common routine of gentlemen's
seats than the singularly original place which we have just left.
There is, however, one distinctive beauty in the grounds of the great
house;--the magnificent firs which shade the terraces and surround the
sweep, giving out in summer odours really Sabaean, and now in this low
autumn sun producing an effect almost magical, as the huge red trunks,
garlanded with ivy, stand out from the deep shadows like an army of
giants. Indoors--Oh I must not take my readers indoors, or we shall
never get away! Indoors the sunshine is brighter still; for there, in a
lofty, lightsome room, sat a damsel fair and arch and piquante, one
whom Titian or Velasquez should be born again to paint, leaning over an
instrument* as sparkling and fanciful as herself, singing pretty French
romances, and Scottish Jacobite songs, and all sorts of graceful and
airy drolleries picked up I know not where--an English improvisatrice!
a gayer Annot Lyle! whilst her sister, of a higher order of beauty, and
with an earnest kindness in her smile that deepens its power, lends to
the piano, as her father to the violin, an expression, a sensibility, a
spirit, an eloquence almost superhuman--almost divine! Oh to hear these
two instruments accompanying my dear companion (I forgot to say that she
is a singer worthy to be so accompanied) in Haydn's exquisite canzonet,
"She never tol