lqu'un pour vous dire que la solitude est une
belle chose?" The epigram cannot be gainsayed; but the necessity is a
thing that does not exist.

It was during one of my lonely journeyings, amid a far distant region
of mountain locked within mountain, and sad rivers and melancholy tarn
writhing or sleeping within all--that I chanced upon a certain rivulet
and island. I came upon them suddenly in the leafy June, and threw
myself upon the turf, beneath the branches of an unknown odorous shrub,
that I might doze as I contemplated the scene. I felt that thus only
should I look upon it--such was the character of phantasm which it wore.

On all sides--save to the west, where the sun was about sinking--arose
the verdant walls of the forest. The little river which turned sharply
in its course, and was thus immediately lost to sight, seemed to have
no exit from its prison, but to be absorbed by the deep green foliage of
the trees to the east--while in the opposite quarter (so it appeared to
me as I lay at length and glanced upward) there poured down noiselessly
and continuously into the valley, a rich golden and crimson waterfall
from the sunset fountains of the sky.

About midway in the short vista which my dreamy vision took in, one
small circular island, profusely verdured, reposed upon the bosom of the
stream.

So blended bank and shadow there

That each seemed pendulous in air--so mirror-like was the glassy water,
that it was scarcely possible to say at what point upon the slope of the
emerald turf its crystal dominion began.

My position enabled me to include in a single view both the eastern and
western extremities of the islet; and I observed a singularly-marked
difference in their aspects. The latter was all one radiant harem of
garden beauties. It glowed and blushed beneath the eyes of the slant
sunlight, and fairly laughed with flowers. The grass was short,
springy, sweet-scented, and Asphodel-interspersed. The trees were lithe,
mirthful, erect--bright, slender, and graceful,--of eastern figure and
foliage, with bark smooth, glossy, and parti-colored. There seemed a
deep sense of life and joy about all; and although no airs blew from out
the heavens, yet every thing had motion through the gentle sweepings to
and fro of innumerable butterflies, that might have been mistaken for
tulips with wings. (*4)

The other or eastern end of the isle was whelmed in the blackest shade.
A sombre, yet beautiful and peaceful glo