there are clustered verandas where the
nightingale might woo the rose, and lattice-windows reaching from eaves
to ground-sill, so sheltered that they might stand open in storm and
rain, and tall circular chimneys, shaped almost like the stems of the
trees that overshadow the roof irregular, and over all a gleam of blue
sky and a few motionless clouds. The noisy world ceases to be, and the
tranquil heart, delighted with the sweet seclusion, breathes, "Oh! that
this were my cell, and that I were a hermit!"

But you soon see that the proprietor is not a hermit; for everywhere you
discern unostentatious traces of that elegance and refinement that
belong to social and cultivated life; nothing rude and rough-hewn, yet
nothing prim and precise. Snails and spiders are taught to keep their
own places; and among the flowers of that hanging garden on a sunny
slope, not a weed is to be seen, for weeds are beautiful only by the
wayside, in the matting of hedge-roots, by the mossy stone, and the
brink of the well in the brae--and are offensive only when they intrude
into society above their own rank, and where they have the air and
accent of aliens. By pretty pebbled steps of stairs you mount up from
platform to platform of the sloping woodland banks--the prospect
widening as you ascend, till from a bridge that spans a leaping rivulet,
you behold in full blow all Grassmere Vale, Village, Church-tower, and
Lake, the whole of the mountains, and a noble arch of sky, the
circumference of that little world of peace.

Circumscribed as are the boundaries of this place, yet the grounds are
so artfully, while one thinks so artlessly, laid out, that, wandering
through their labyrinthine recesses, you might believe yourself in an
extensive wilderness. Here you come out upon a green open glade (you see
by the sun-dial it is past seven o'clock)--there the arms of an immense
tree overshadow what is in itself a scene--yonder you have an alley that
serpentises into gloom and obscurity--and from that cliff you doubtless
would see over the tree-tops into the outer and airy world. With all its
natural beauties is intermingled an agreeable quaintness, that shows the
owner has occasionally been working in the spirit of fancy, almost
caprice; the tool-house in the garden is not without its ornaments--the
barn seems habitable, and the byre has somewhat the appearance of a
chapel. You see at once that the man who lives here, instead of being
sick of the w