A little lyric in the epos may be found in a side-journey to Bethel,--a village which no one ever heard of, at least I never did, till now; but when we did hear, we heard so much and so well that we at once started on a tour of exploration, and found--as Halicarnassus quotes the Queen of Sheba--there was more of it than we expected. The ride down in the train, if you are willing and able to stand on the rear platform of the rear car, is of surpassing beauty. The mountains seem to rise and approach in dumb, reluctant farewell. The river bends and insinuates, spreading out to you all its islands of delight. Molten in its depths, golden in its shallows, it meanders through its meadows, a joy forever. Bethel sits on its banks, loveliest of rural villages, and gently unfolds its beauties to your longing eyes. The Bethel House,--a large old-fashioned country-house, with one of those broad, social second-story piazzas, and a well bubbling up in the middle of the dining-room--think of that, Master Brooke!--a hotel whose landlord welcomes you with lemonade and roses (perhaps he wouldn't YOU!),--a hotel terrible to evil-doers, but a praise to them that do well, inasmuch as it is conducted on the millennial principle of quietly frightening away disagreeable people with high rates, and fascinating amiable people with reasonable ones, so that, of course, you have the wheat without the chaff,--a hotel where people go to rest and enjoy, and wear morning-dresses all day, and are fine only when they choose--indeed, you can do that anywhere, if you only think so. The idea that you must lug all your best clothes through the wilderness is absurd. A good travelling-dress, admissible of bisection, a muslin spencer for warm evenings, and a velvet bodice when you design to be gorgeous, will take you through with all the honors of war. Besides, there are always sure to be plenty of people in every drawing-room who will be sumptuously attired, and you can feast your eyes luxuriously on them, and gratefully feel that the work is so well done as to need no co-operation of yours, and that you can be comfortable with an easy conscience. Where was I? O, on the top, of Paradise Hill, I believe, surveying Paradise, a little indistinct and quavering in the sheen of a summer noon, but clear enough to reveal its Pison, its Gilton, its Hiddekel, and Euphrates, compassing the whole land of Havilah; or perhaps I was on Sparrowhawk, beholding Paradise from another point, dotted with homes and church-spires, rich and fertile, fair still, with compassing river and tranquil lake; or, more probable than either, I was driving along the highland that skirts the golden meadows through which the river purls, ruddy in the setting sun, and rejoicing in the beauty amid which he lives and moves and has his being. Lovely Bethel, fairest ornament of the sturdy mountain-land, tender and smiling as if no storm had ever swept, no sin ever marred,--in Arcadia that no one