ch night or morning, I invariably enjoyed with
my feet on the fender, in dreamy contemplation of the past, wreathed
in the fumes of a cigar, and soothed by the lowly and desultory
murmurs of the geese in the straw-yard beneath my window.

At the distance of about two miles from me, was Winthra, a seat of his
Grace the Duke of Northumberland. Though the smallest of his several
domains, it was the most beautiful; nor was it diminutive, being six
miles in circumference. This paradise was placed in the centre of a
country which was hideous in the extreme. Here then, was "the diamond
of the desert."

We may remember that, in olden times, the amorous Edgar, on the fame
of Ordulph's lovely daughter, despatched a confidant to her distant
home in order to ascertain whether her beauty was of such
transcendency as report declared it.

In this spot, then, the ancient seat of the Earls of Devon, the future
queen, Elfrida, lived. A park it has ever been, from that day to this;
and as one winds his silent steps between the stems of the giant and
ruined oaks, the impression is, that here the spirits of Druids linger
and roam as the last refuge left them untouched by the hand of man.

It contained the two sides of an extensive valley, sweeping gradually
down to the Winthra, a beautiful trout-stream murmuring along the
ravine. The only inhabitant of the enormous mansion was a worn out and
pensioned butler; so that my sole companions of the solitude were the
deer, and these being never or seldom meddled with, had increased to
multitudes; and when one observed the huge and lofty walls with which
the whole was shut in, he felt indeed in Rasselas's happy valley.

Here, then, have I passed days and days, without seeing one soul,
reading, sketching, fishing, and bathing. Only once was I sensible of
an intruder.

One bright moonlight night, I was passing along by the banks of the
stream, when I observed on the other side something which I was
confident, from familiar acquaintance with the spot, was not wont to
be there. As it was lying on the pebbly beach, partly in the chequered
shade of a beech-tree, and partly in the water, I was totally at a
loss to imagine what it might be, but had a strong foreboding that it
was a human body. A little lower down there was a shallow, through
which I passed; and on reaching the spot, I must acknowledge that I
was equally horrified to find that the object of my anxiety was a
freshly-killed deer. The p