This is a peep into the daily life of the poetess, which is worth a whole volume of ordinary biography. We see her here amid the lonely magnificence of nature; yet, at the same time, surrounded by those affectionate ties that make the only real society on earth. The affectionate mother, the beloved brother and sister, the buoyant hearts and voices of her own children. We see that there and then she was and must be happy. We see how wise was that instinctive love that drew the poetic heart from the flattering and worshiping things of the city, to dwell apart with God, with nature, and with family affection. What has all the society of ordinary city and literary life to equal that? The throng of drawing-rooms, where people stand and look at each other, and remain strangers as much as if they were sundered by half the globe! Nay, it is not half a globe, it is a whole world of fast succeeding engagements; dissipations that beget indifference; flittings of the eye from face to face, and of the ear from gossip to gossip, where neither eye nor ear ever finds any power or wish for rest, but the heart yawns in insufferable weariness, if decorum keep the mouth shut. It is this dreary world which is thrust between man and man, and kills at once time and enjoyment. What has such a life, with all its petty scandals, and bitterness, and foul criticisms, and rankling jealousies, to compare with the breezy mountain, and the blue sky soaring high above; with the gray ruin, and the rushing river; with the dell and its whispering leaves, soothing down the mind to a peaceful consciousness, in which thoughts of eternity steal into it, and come forth again to the eternal page?