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that beautiful spot only eight years before, was then in ruins; the 

 dining-parlour converted to a stable, the drawing-room to a cow- 

 house: the garden was ploughed up, and sown with grain, the 

 trees destroyed, the lines to the Naiad defaced, and her urn 

 broken. Such was the picture lately given me by colonel Boden, 

 then a subaltern officer in the Baroche garrison. This villa with 

 two others adjoining, were the evening resort of our military 

 friends from the city, who came to pass the tranquil moonlight 

 hour in the garden, sup under the summiniana, and enjoy the 

 " feast of reason, and the flow of soul," with congenial minds, 

 alive to every feeling of urbanity and friendship. 



There is a beautiful passage in sacred writ, relating to the fall 

 of Assyria; which under the imagery of a similar devastation, illus- 

 trates the destruction of the stately banian tree, and the surround- 

 ing grove in our garden, which were refreshed by the waters they 

 overshadowed. " Behold, the Assyrian was a cedar in Lebanon, 

 with fair branches, a shadowing shroud, and of an high stature; 

 his top was among the thick boughs; the waters made him rneat, 

 the deep set him up on high, with her rivers running round about 

 his plants; and her little rivers flowing to all the trees of the 

 field. Therefore his height was exalted, his boughs were multi- 

 plied, and his branches became long, because of the multitude 

 of waters, when he shot forth. All the fowls of heaven made their 

 nests in his boughs, and under his branches the beasts of the field 

 found shelter: thus Avas he fair in his greatness, in the lenolh of 

 his branches; for his root was by the Avaters. The cedars in the 

 garden of God could not hide him; the fir trees were not like his 

 boughs; the chesnut trees were not like his branches; nor any tree 



A r OL. in. 3 o 



