When I re-visited my dear native country, after an absence of many weary
years, and a long dull voyage, my heart was filled with unutterable
delight and admiration. The land seemed a perfect paradise. It was in
the spring of the year. The blue vault of heaven--the clear
atmosphere--the balmy vernal breeze--the quiet and picturesque cattle,
browsing on luxuriant verdure, or standing knee deep in a crystal
lake--the hills sprinkled with snow-white sheep and sometimes partially
shadowed by a wandering cloud--the meadows glowing with golden butter-cups
and be-dropped with daisies--the trim hedges of crisp and sparkling
holly--the sound of near but unseen rivulets, and the songs of
foliage-hidden birds--the white cottages almost buried amidst trees, like
happy human nests--the ivy-covered church, with its old grey spire
"pointing up to heaven," and its gilded vane gleaming in the light--the
sturdy peasants with their instruments of healthy toil--the white-capped
matrons bleaching their newly-washed garments in the sun, and throwing
them like snow-patches on green slopes, or glossy garden shrubs--the
sun-browned village girls, resting idly on their round elbows at small
open casements, their faces in sweet keeping with the trellised
flowers:--all formed a combination of enchantments that would mock the
happiest imitative efforts of human art. But though the bare enumeration
of the details of this English picture, will, perhaps, awaken many dear
recollections in the reader's mind, I have omitted by far the most
interesting feature of the whole scene--_the rosy children, loitering
about the cottage gates, or tumbling gaily on the warm grass_.[005][006]
Two scraps of verse of a similar tendency shall follow this prose
description:--