of necessity, and consequently of interest.'

It was one of Emily's earliest pleasures to ramble among the scenes
of nature; nor was it in the soft and glowing landscape that she
most delighted; she loved more the wild wood-walks, that skirted the
mountain; and still more the mountain's stupendous recesses, where the
silence and grandeur of solitude impressed a sacred awe upon her heart,
and lifted her thoughts to the GOD OF HEAVEN AND EARTH. In scenes like
these she would often linger along, wrapt in a melancholy charm, till
the last gleam of day faded from the west; till the lonely sound of a
sheep-bell, or the distant bark of a watch-dog, were all that broke
on the stillness of the evening. Then, the gloom of the woods; the
trembling of their leaves, at intervals, in the breeze; the bat,
flitting on the twilight; the cottage-lights, now seen, and now
lost--were circumstances that awakened her mind into effort, and led to
enthusiasm and poetry.

Her favourite walk was to a little fishing-house, belonging to St.
Aubert, in a woody glen, on the margin of a rivulet that descended from
the Pyrenees, and, after foaming among their rocks, wound its silent
way beneath the shades it reflected. Above the woods, that screened this
glen, rose the lofty summits of the Pyrenees, which often burst boldly
on the eye through the glades below. Sometimes the shattered face of
a rock only was seen, crowned with wild shrubs; or a shepherd's cabin
seated on a cliff, overshadowed by dark cypress, or waving ash. Emerging
from the deep recesses of the woods, the glade opened to the distant
landscape, where the rich pastures and vine-covered slopes of Gascony
gradually declined to the plains; and there, on the winding shores of
the Garonne, groves, and hamlets, and villas--their outlines softened by
distance, melted from the eye into one rich harmonious tint.

This, too, was the favourite retreat of St. Aubert, to which he
frequently withdrew from the fervour of noon, with his wife, his
daughter, and his books; or came at the sweet evening hour to welcome
the silent dusk, or to listen for the music of the nightingale.
Sometimes, too, he brought music of his own, and awakened every fairy
echo with the tender accents of his oboe; and often have the tones of
Emily's voice drawn sweetness from the waves, over which they trembled.

It was in one of these excursions to this spot, that she observed the
following lines written with a pencil on a