estes!

'Happy art thou, my son, to know only the pastoral divinities.'

"And above the door of Madame de la Tour's cottage, where the families used
to assemble, I placed this line:

At secura quies, et nescia fallere vita.

'Here is a calm conscience, and a life ignorant of deceit.'

"But Virginia did not approve of my Latin; she said, that what I had placed
at the foot of her weather flag was too long and too learned. 'I should
have liked better,' added she, 'to have seen inscribed, _Always agitated,
yet ever constant_.'

"The sensibility of those happy families extended itself to every thing
around them. They had given names the most tender to objects in appearance
the most indifferent. A border of orange, plantain, and bread trees,
planted round a greensward where Virginia and Paul sometimes danced, was
called Concord. An old tree, beneath the shade of which Madame de la Tour
and Margaret used to relate their misfortunes, was called, The Tears wiped
away. They gave the names of Britany and Normandy to little portions of
ground where they had sown corn, strawberries, and peas. Domingo and Mary,
wishing, in imitation of their mistresses, to recall the places of their
birth in Africa, gave the names of Angola and Foullepointe to the spots
where grew the herb with which they wove baskets, and where they had
planted a calbassia tree. Thus, with the productions of their respective
climates, those exiled families cherished the dear illusions which bind us
to our native country, and softened their regrets in a foreign land. Alas!
I have seen animated by a thousand soothing appellations, those trees,
those fountains, those stones which are now overthrown, which now, like the
plains of Greece, present nothing but ruins and affecting remembrances.

"Neither the neglect of her European friends, nor the delightful romantic
spot which she inhabited, could banish from the mind of Madame de la Tour
this tender attachment to her native country. While the luxurious fruits of
this climate gratified the taste of her family, she delighted to rear those
which were more graceful, only because they were the productions of her
early home. Among other little pieces addressed to flowers and fruits of
northern climes, I found the following sonnet to the Strawberry.

SONNET.

TO THE STRAWBERRY.

The strawberry blooms upon its lowly bed:
Plant of my native soil! The lime may fling
More potent fragrance on