THE SEARCH AND FINDING. 15 



eye, and the sweetest roses of Provence lending a 

 balmy fragrance to the air. 



Sheltered slopes recall too, always, what is most 

 captivating in rural life. You never see them or look 

 for them even, in Dutch-land in Poland, never ; in 

 Prussia, or on the highways of travel in France, 

 never. And no rural poems, or pictures that haunt 

 the memory, were ever rhymed or sketched in those 

 regions. Theocritus lived where lie the sweetest of 

 valleys ; Tibullus and Horace both knew the purple 

 shadows that lay in the clefts of the Latian hills. De- 

 lille chased his rural phantoms beyond the Burgundian 

 mountains, before they had taken their best form. 



But in the English Isle by Abergavenny, by Mer- 

 thyr, under the Tors of Derbyshire, in the lea of the 

 Dartmoor hills, abreast of Snowdon what sheltered 

 greenness and bloom ! What nestling homesteads ! 



I must not forget to give a sequence to my story. 

 I had entered my advertisement. Was it possible 

 that any one in the possession of such a place as I 

 had roughly indicated, would be willing to sell ? 



For twenty-four hours I was in a state of doubt ; 

 after that time, I may say the doubt was removed. 

 I must frankly confess that I was astounded to find 

 what a number of persons, counting not by tens, but 

 by fifties, and even hundreds, were anxious to dis- 



