— 409 — 



heather- crowned hills and breezy dells of their native 



land : 



u Bards sublime 

 Whose distant footsteps echo 

 Through the corridors of Time," 



The scenes, the haunts in which these ethereal beings, 

 had once moved, instinct with life, still echoing their 

 songs, their joys, their home-sorrows, their world- 

 wide fame, I had dwelt among them, taken possession 

 of them ; as it were been subjugated by their own 

 romantic atmosphere. T'would be hard, my friends, 

 even for one not to the manner born, to feel insensible 

 to the witchery of such associations, to seal his soul 

 against the softening influence exhaled from those homes 

 so charmingly sung by Mrs. Hemans : 



" The stately Homes of England, 

 How beautiful they stand 

 Amidst their tall ancestral trees, 

 O'er all the pleasant land ! " 



For a lover of the country, one who for years has 

 revelled in the sweet intimacy of stately trees and 

 fragrant flowers, t'is harder still to approach, or, once 

 enjoyed, to quit unmoved some of these hospitable 

 english manors (it was our good fortune to enter more 

 than one) full of cheery, family memories ; basking in 

 vernal bloom, resplendent with sunshine and foliage ; 

 adorned, such as Englishmen now know, with vel- 

 vety lawn, cricket and tennis grounds, drives, ponds, 

 hedges, far-outspreading oaks, graceful elms, venerable 

 yews, and that superb denizen of English parks, the 

 copper-beach, imported, t'is said, in Britain by the 

 Normans. Of this truly gorgeous tree, I saw some 

 excellent representatives, among other spots, at two 

 country seats, which will long remain green in my 

 memory : Eothay-Holme, next to Canon Bell's pictu- 

 resque dwelling (some here may remember hearing last 

 summer this eloquent divine at Quebec) at Ambleside, 



