Madame de la Tour
composed the following sonnet.

SONNET

TO SIMPLICITY.

Nymph of the desert! on this lonely shore,
Simplicity, thy blessings still are mine,
And all thou canst not give I pleased resign,
For all beside can soothe my soul no more.
I ask no lavish heaps to swell my store,
And purchase pleasures far remote from thine.
Ye joys, for which the race of Europe pine,
Ah! not for me your studied grandeur pour,
Let me where yon tall cliffs are rudely piled,
Where towers the palm amidst the mountain trees,
Where pendant from the steep, with graces wild,
The blue liana floats upon the breeze,
Still haunt those bold recesses, Nature's child,
Where thy majestic charms my spirit seize!

"Paul, at twelve years of age, was stronger and more intelligent than
Europeans are at fifteen, and had embellished the plantations which Domingo
had only cultivated. He had gone with him to the neighbouring woods, and
rooted up young plants of lemon trees, oranges, and tamarinds, the round
heads of which are of so fresh a green, together with date palm trees,
producing fruit filled with a sweet cream, which has the fine perfume of
the orange flower. Those trees, which were already of a considerable size,
he planted round this little enclosure. He had also sown the seeds of many
trees which the second year bear flowers or fruits. The agathis, encircled
with long clusters of white flowers, which hang upon it like the crystal
pendants of a lustre. The Persian lilac, which lifts high in air its gay
flax-coloured branches. The pappaw tree, the trunk of which, without
branches, forms a column set round with green melons, bearing on their
heads large leaves like those of the fig tree.

"The seeds and kernels of the gum tree, terminalia, mangoes, alligator
pears, the guava, the bread tree, and the narrow-leaved eugenia, were
planted with profusion; and the greater number of those trees already
afforded to their young cultivator both shade and fruit. His industrious
hands had diffused the riches of nature even on the most barren parts of
the plantation. Several kinds of aloes, the common Indian fig, adorned with
yellow flowers, spotted with red, and the thorny five-angled touch thistle,
grew upon the dark summits of the rocks, and seemed to aim at reaching the
long lianas, which, loaded with blue or crimson flowers, hung scattered
over the steepest part of the moun