momentary balm over the mind of General De Brooke, as he strolled around his beautifully diversified pleasure-grounds, and beheld the wild magnificence of the surrounding scenery. Those dark impending clouds, gathered by the recent storm, softly dispersing, fleeted away in æther. Every shadowy mist concentrating, passed over the hills, opening a bright perspective, and affording to the eye objects as various as they were lovely,—the picturesque vale, where the Avon, bordered by the pensive willow, spread its bounteous influence and fertilized the meadows; the hills forming an amphitheatre around, some tufted with hanging wood even to their summits, appearing the more luxuriant as contrasted with the barrenness of others. An undulating path led from cliff to cliff, till, obscured by the forest's interwoven branches, and then again appearing, it could be traced to the distant mountain, whose top, broad and towering, mingled in the blue expanse.
This rich assemblage, though to the General no longer wearing the charm of novelty, could not fail of exciting his admiration, to which was added a sentiment of attachment; for even a hill, a stream, wood, or lawn, nature's inanimate but charming objects, become the more endeared to
