The walk was an exceedingly pleasant one, coming in varied scenes upon the mind, each contrasted with the other, yet each harmonising beautifully. After about a hundred and fifty or two hundred yards of short turf they entered a glade, where tall trees, backed by deep shrubs, cut off the sunbeams, except where here and there they struggled through an open spot. Tall beeches, more than a century old, crossed their arms above to give shade to the ground below, and though the walk, nearly fifty feet in breadth from bole to bole of the old trees, was mown along its whole extent, yet a little to one side and the other the wild flowers appeared gemming the earth like stars upon a firmament of green. There was the purple columbine and the blue periwinkle, and the yellow primrose, and the pale bending anemone; the hyacinth and the violet; and if art had had any share therein, the arrangement of the flowers was so skilfully managed, that all seemed owing but to nature's hand. The deep branches of the beech, and the green shade that they cast through the air, gave a solemn and elevating tone to the whole. The flowers and the occasional bursts of sunshine, the rich colours of the moss, yellow and brown, and green, enlivened the scene, and made the solemn stillness of the long avenue seem like a thoughtful countenance brightened by a smile. Then suddenly, when they had walked on for about a quarter of a mile, they turned to the left through a wide break in the alley, and all was wonderfully changed. Shade and melancholy was gone; and they stood upon the edge of a round sloping descent of some three or four hundred feet covered with green short turf, and marked out, at short distances, by chumps of birches and hawthorns. On the right was the woody crest of the hill, concealing in its bosom the continuation of the avenue, which they had just quitted; but on the left, wide over the tree tops and waving ground beyond, stretched out an extensive prospect in the sunshine, all light and loveliness. It was one of the bright days of early summer. Scarcely a cloud was in the sky, and yet there was a softening effect in the atmosphere, which mellowed the lights and shades into each other, and suffered the sight to pass softly and gently from each line of the distance to that which succeeded with a sort of dreamy pleasure, vague and indefinite, but very sweet, like the sounds that sometimes come upon our sleeping ears in the visions of the morning.