her, it may be, for a different
purpose. A temporary gush will occasionally spring up from the first
well-head of our affections. However homely and seemingly ill-adapted,
in outward show and character, for giving birth to those feelings
generally designated by the epithet romantic, the place where we first
breathed, where our ideas were first moulded, formed and assimilated, as
it were, to the condition of the surrounding atmosphere (their very
shape and colour determined by the medium in which they first sprung)
the casual recurrence of a scene like this,--forming part and parcel of
our very existence, and incorporated with the very fabric of our
thoughts,--must, in spite of all subsequent impressions, revive those
feelings, however long they may have been dormant, with a force and
vividness which the bare recollection can never excite.

The garden-gate stood open. The initials of my name, still legible,
appeared rudely carved on the posts--a boyish propensity which most of
us have indulged; and I well remember ministering to its gratification
wherever I durst hazard the experiment, when first initiated into the
mystery of hewing out these important letters with a rusty pen-knife.

Not a creature was stirring; and the nature of the present occupants,
whether sylphs, gnomes, or genii, was a question not at all, as it yet
appeared, in a train for solution. The front door was closed; but, as I
knew every turn and corner about the house, I made no doubt of soon
finding out its inmates, if any of them were in the neighbourhood. I
worked my way through the garden, knee-deep and rank with weed, for the
purpose of reconnoitring the back-offices. I steered pretty cautiously
past what memory, that great dealer in hyperbole, had hitherto generally
contrived to picture as a huge lake--now, to my astonishment, dwindled
into a duck-pond--but not without danger from its slippery margin. It
still reposed under the shadow of the old cherry-tree, once the
harbinger of delight, as the returning season gave intimation of another
bountiful supply of fruit. Its gnarled stump, now stunted and decaying,
had scarcely one token of life upon its scattered branches. Following a
narrow walk, nearly obliterated, I entered a paved court. The first
tramp awoke a train of echoes that seemed as though they had slumbered
since my departure, and now started from their sleep to greet or to
admonish the returning truant. Grass in luxuriant tufts, capricio