so still. (1) Now and then a sound breaks the silence, but a sound so
much in harmony with the solitude that it only deepens its charms.
Hark! the low cry of the night-bird from yonder glen amidst the small
gray gleaming rocks. Hark! as night deepens, the bark of the distant
watch-dog, or the low, strange howl of his more savage species, from
which he de fends the fold. Hark! the echo catches the sound, and
flings it sportively from hill to hill,--farther and farther and farther
down, till all again is hushed, and the flowers hang noiseless over your
head as you ride through a grove of the giant gum-trees. Now the air is
literally charged with the odors, and the sense of fragrance grows
almost painful in its pleasure. You quicken your pace, and escape again
into the open plains and the full moonlight, and through the slender
tea-trees catch the gleam of the river, and in the exquisite fineness of
the atmosphere hear the soothing sound of its murmur.

Pisistratus.--"And this land has become the heritage of our people!
Methinks I see, as I gaze around, the scheme of the All-beneficent
Father disentangling itself clear through the troubled history of
mankind. How mysteriously, while Europe rears its populations and
fulfils its civilizing mission, these realms have been concealed from
its eyes,--divulged to us just as civilization needs the solution to its
problems; a vent for feverish energies, baffled in the crowd; offering
bread to the famished, hope to the desperate; in very truth enabling the
'New World to redress the balance of the Old.' Here, what a Latium for
the wandering spirits,--

"'On various seas by various tempests tossed.'

"Here, the actual AEneid passes before our eyes. From the huts of the
exiles scattered over this hardier Italy, who cannot see in the future