rammar, geography, astronomy,
writing, arithmetic, history, and morals, as I should have gained had I
been at a school, instead of being forced to remain on a desolate
island.

I need not say that I still desired to leave it. I had long been tired
of the place, notwithstanding that, from our united exertions, we
enjoyed many comforts which we could not have hoped for. Our hut we had
metamorphosed into something Mrs Reichardt styled a rustic cottage,
which, covered as it was with flowers and creepers, really looked very
pretty; and the garden added greatly to its pleasant appearance: for
near the house we had transplanted everything that bore a flower that
could be found in the island, and had planted some shrubs, that, having
been carefully nurtured, made rapid growth, and screened the hut from
the wind.

I had built a sort of outhouse for storing potatoes and firewood, and a
fowl-house for the gannets, which were now a numerous flock; and had
planted a fence round the garden, so that, as Mrs Reichardt said, we
looked as if we had selected a dwelling in our own beloved England, in
the heart of a rural district, instead of our being circumscribed in a
little island thousands of miles across the wide seas, from the home of
which we were so fond of talking.

Although my companion always spoke warmly of the land of her birth, and
evidently would have been glad to return to it, she never grieved over
her hard fate in being, as it were, a prisoner on a rock, out of reach
of friends and kindred; indeed, she used to chide me for being impatient
of my detention, and insensible of the blessings I enjoyed.

"What temptations are we not free from here?" she would say. "We see
nothing of the world; we cannot be contaminated with its vices, or
suffer from its follies. The hideous wars--the terrible revolutions--
the dreadful visitations of famine and pestilence--are completely
unknown to us. Robbery, and murder, and fraud, and the thousand other
phases of human wickedness, we altogether escape. There was a time,
when men, for the purpose of leading holy lives, abandoned the fair
cities in which they had lived in the enjoyment of every luxury, and
sought a cave in some distant desert, where, in the lair of some wild
beast, with a stone for a pillow, a handful of herbs for a meal, and a
cup of water for beverage, they lived out the remnant of their days in a
constant succession of mortifications, prayers, and penitence.

"H