Ardgillan Castle, was one of six that my friend, Mr. Sully,
painted of me at various times, the best likeness of them all being one
that he took of me in the part of Beatrice, for which I did not sit.]
You talk of "nailing me down," to send me to the Academy, and the
expression brought a sudden shuddering recollection to my mind of the
dismal night I passed in Boston _packing up our stage clothes_ in dear
Dall's bedroom _while she was lying in her coffin_. I know not why your
words recalled that miserable circumstance to me, and all the mingled
feelings that accompanied such an occupation in such company....

You ask me if I do not love the country as I used to do. Indeed I do;
for, like all best good things, it seems the lovelier for near and
intimate acquaintance. Yet the country here, and this place in
particular, is not to me what it might be, and will be yet. This place
is not ours, and during the life of an old Miss B. will not belong to
us: this, of course, keeps my spirit of improvement in check, and
indeed, even if it were made over to us, with signing and sealing and
all due legal ceremonies, I should still feel some delicacy in making
wholesale alterations in a place which an elderly person, to whom it has
belonged, remembers such as it is for many years.

The absolute absence of all taste in matters of ornamental cultivation
is lamentably evident in the country dwellings of rich and poor alike,
as far as I have yet seen in this neighborhood. No natural beauty seems
to be perceived and taken advantage of, no defect hidden or adorned;
proximity to the road, for obvious purposes of mere convenience, seems
to have been the one idea in the selection of building sites; and
straight, ungraveled paths, straight rows of trees, straight strips of
coarse grass, straight box borders, dividing straight narrow
flower-beds, the prevailing idea of a garden; together with a deplorable
dearth of flowers, shrubberies, ornamental trees, and everything that
really deserves the name.

Good-bye, and God bless you.

Ever, as ever, yours,
F. A. B.

[The country between the Wissihiccon and Pennipack--two small
picturesque streams flowing, the one into the Schuylkill, the other
into the Delaware--is a prosperous farming region, with a pleasingly
varied, undulating surface, the arable land diversified with
stretches o