ks, and
over a foaming cataract; there, a light column of bluish, curling smoke
told of the shepherd's shieling, situated, bosomed in trees, amid some
solitary pass of the mountains; here, the dark, melancholy pine reared its
mournful head, companioned by the sable fir, the larch, the service-tree,
and the wild cherry; there, the silvery willow laved its drooping branches
in the stormy flood; whilst, with the white foam of the joyous exulting
waters, all trees of beauty, majesty, and grace, rising from a
richly-verdant turfing, formed a delightful contrast. I heard the cry of
the soaring eaglet, as he rose from his eyry in the rock; wild, but
pleasant music was in the cool, strong wind, which flowed now roughly
around, and lashed me, like the sweeping sea-wave.

"Hey? Um 'fear'd you're a trifle ard of 'earing, arn't you? Why then put a
roasted _ingin_ when you go to bed into your _earn_, and I'll warrant
'twill cure you if you do 't _reglar_."

"O dear, no ma'am," I replied; "indeed I'm not _deaf_," with a peculiar
emphasis on this last word.

"_No_? Well, I do declare then, I've been haxing you to admire this fine
country for _this_ ten minutes;--only look! 'tis a vast deal more bootiful
than the road I travelled t'other day!"

So, to please the honest woman, I looked at her "fine country," and beheld
on my side the road (for we were sitting at cross corners) a stunted
hedge-row, inclosing a field or two of stubble; and on hers, a sear,
dismal heath, whereupon were marshalled, in irregular array, a few
miserable, brown furze bushes; amongst which, a meagre, shaggy ass, more
miserable still, with his hind legs logged and chained, was endeavouring
to pick up a scanty subsistence. What the road of the other day could have
been, it surpassed even my capacity, with this specimen of "the bootiful"
before me, to surmise; but my companion was evidently one of those
enviable individuals, whose ignorance is indeed their happiness, or whose
imagination supplies the deficiencies of bare reality.

Shortly afterwards we took up another passenger--a "_lady_" also--whose
figure was youthful, and whose face, perhaps, was not otherwise; but as
she was weeping bitterly, her features were concealed by a white cambric
_mouchoir_ from my curious gaze. Poor creature! Had she parted from a
lover?--a parent?--a child? Was she a reduced lady, quitting, for the
first time and the last, her paternal home, to seek, by the exertion of
her tale