I 23a ] [Skpt. 



RECOLLECTIONS OF SCENES AND CITIES : N". II. 



BY THE AUTHOR OF " SPAIN IN 1830." 



It is no new observation to say, that the melody of a bird, or the 

 perfume of a flower, may change the current of one's thoughts, annihi- 

 late the realities of time and space, and deliver us over to the dominion 

 of wild fancy — that sweet will-o'-the-wisp that blinds us to all but our 

 own bright delusions. The cloudless brilliancy of yesterday, and the 

 fine autumnal breeze that had swept over the golden harvest, had set- 

 tled into one of those quiet balmy evenings that are but too rare in this 

 uncertain climate. I sauntered leisurely among the beautiful knolls 

 that lie by the banks of Wye, thinking neither of the past nor of the 

 future, but open to all the sweet influences of the present scene— the 

 gleam upon the trembling river — the cattle, with their quiet contempla- 

 tive look, lying in the meadow, or standing reflected in the chrystal 

 stream — the sheep, " forty feeding like one," scattered upon the neigh- 

 bouring slope — when suddenly I found myself at the foot of the valley 

 of Heas, in the midst of the Pyrenees. What was it that had in an 

 instant carried me a thousand miles from the banks of the Wye, and 

 made me blind to all the sweet images that lay around ! — it was a little 

 hedge-row of mingled box and privet that encircled a cottage garden — it 

 wafted to me a Pyrenean odour, and before I was sensible of the cause, 

 I stood in the valley of Heas, gazing upon the mountain slopes, covered 

 ■with the blue iris and its yellow eyes ; listening to the bleat of the 

 sheep " upon a thousand hills ;" watching the long patriarchal trains of 

 shepherds and shepherd families, with their cattle, their goats, and their 

 horses, winding along the side of the Gave, and inhaling, with the 

 mountain air, the wild fragrance of mountain shrubs. It is a pleasant 

 law of our nature by which recollections are so easily revived ; for it is 

 scarcely possible to walk through the fields, but some trifle — it may be a 

 sight — asound — an odour — gives to our walk a charming variety, chequer- 

 ing our evening's stroll by short excursions into far distant countries, 

 and mingling with present scenes, the memory, scarcely less vivid, of 

 half- for gotten images and adventures, that we would not willingly let 

 slip from our stock of recollections. For my own part, the smell of a 

 plantation of young firs places me in Norway, by the margin of the 

 river Glommen ; the scream of the jay carries me into the forest of 

 Ardennes ; the tinkle of a sheep-bell sends me straight to Switzerland ; 

 the odour of geranium transports me to the Moorish gardens of Se- 

 ville ; the sight of a narcissus seats me in a nook of the rock of Gibral- 

 tar ; and the smell of the box-tree never fails to lay me on some flowery 

 slope in the midst of the Pyrenees. Once I had a narrow escape from 

 lying among these mountains for ever. 



In the valley of the Aure, and at but a short distance from Arreau, 

 stands the ruined castle of Armagnac. It was full moon, the night I 

 reached Arreau, and the fine irregular outline of the ruin, upon its 

 wood-belted mount, standing in relief against the dark blue sky, and 

 its broken walls white in the moonshine, tempted me to visit it. It is 

 but the imagination that lends beauty to a moonlight view ; the fantastic 

 peaks of the Pyrenees — the green meadows that skirt the stream — the 

 old forests hanging on the mountain sides, were then all undistinguish- 



