think of many things very far removed, and seem to get closer to them.
The last setting sun that Shakspeare saw reddened the windows here, and
struck warmly on the faces of the hinds coming home from the fields.
The mighty storm that raged while Cromwell lay a-dying made all the
oak-woods groan round about here, and tore the thatch from the very
roofs I gaze upon. When I think of this, I can almost, so to speak,
lay my hand on Shakspeare and on Cromwell. These poor walls were
contemporaries of both, and I find something affecting in the thought.
The mere soil is, of course, far older than either, but _it_ does not
touch one in the same way. A wall is the creation of a human hand, the
soil is not.

This place suits my whim, and I like it better year after year. As
with everything else, since I began to love it I find it gradually
growing beautiful. Dreamthorp--a castle, a chapel, a lake, a
straggling strip of gray houses, with a blue film of smoke over
all--lies embosomed in emerald. Summer, with its daisies, runs up to
every cottage door. From the little height where I am now sitting, I
see it beneath me. Nothing could be more peaceful. The wind and the
birds fly over it. A passing sunbeam makes brilliant a white
gable-end, and brings out the colours of the blossomed apple-tree
beyond, and disappears. I see figures in the street, but hear them
not. The hands on the church clock seem always pointing to one hour.
Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine. I make a frame of my
fingers, and look at my picture. On the walls of the next Academy's
Exhibition will hang nothing half so beautiful!

My village is, I think, a special favourite of summer's. Every
window-sill in it she touches with colour and fragrance; everywhere she
wakens the drowsy murmurs of the hives; every place she scents with