magnificence of their dark velvet cloaks, with golden borders.

The fields and wood-paths have as yet few charms to entice the
wanderer. In a walk, the other day, I found no violets, nor
anemones, nor anything in the likeness of a flower. It was worth
while, however, to ascend our opposite hill for the sake of gaining
a general idea of the advance of spring, which I had hitherto been
studying in its minute developments. The river lay around me in a
semicircle, overflowing all the meadows which give it its Indian
name, and offering a noble breadth to sparkle in the sunbeams.
Along the hither shore a row of trees stood up to their knees in
water; and afar off, on the surface of the stream, tufts of bushes
thrust up their heads, as it were, to breathe. The most striking
objects were great solitary trees here and there, with a mile-wide
waste of water all around them. The curtailment of the trunk, by
its immersion in the river, quite destroys the fair proportions of
the tree, and thus makes us sensible of a regularity and propriety
in the usual forms of nature. The flood of the present season--
though it never amounts to a freshet on our quiet stream--has
encroached farther upon the land than any previous one for at least
a score of years. It has overflowed stone fences, and even rendered
a portion of the highway navigable for boats.

The waters, however, are now gradually subsiding; islands become
annexed to the mainland; and other islands emerge, like new
creations, from the watery waste. The scene supplies an admirable
image of the receding of the Nile, except that there is no deposit
of black slime; or of Noah's flood, only that there is a freshness
and novelty in these recovered portions of the continent which give
the impression of a world just made rather than of one so polluted