extreme influences of this sky.[98] There were many wild things growing on this mountain, that for beauty, and delicacy of form and colour, would have found honourable place in our conservatories; but they had not the slightest perfume, and I took no delight in them. A scentless flower is a monster; and though I acknowledge with due admiration the pale beauty of that queen of flowers, the camelia, I never see it in its cold pearl-like pride of bloom, that it does not strike me like a fine lady--an artificial creature, fair indeed to behold, but without the very property of a flower--sweetness. Oh, the lilies of the valley,--the primroses,--the violets,--the sweet, sweet hawthorn,--the fresh fragrant blush rose,--the purple lilac bloom,--the silver serynga,--the faint breathing hyacinths,--the golden cowslips, of a morning, at the close of May in England!--the fulness of sweetness that loads the temperate air, as it breathes over the fresh lawns of that flower garden! * * * * * * * * * * I took another long ride to a quarry ten miles distant from Boston, whence the granite, which is much used in Boston for building, is drawn. I started at six in the morning, and rode about twenty miles before breakfast, which I think was a piece of virtue bordering upon heroism: to be sure, I had my reward, for any thing so sweet as the whole world, at about half-past six, I never beheld. The dew was yet fresh upon tree and flower,--the roads were shady and cool,--the dust had not yet been disturbed; a mild, soft, full breeze blew over the flowery earth, and the rosy apple blossoms stirred on the rocking boughs against the serene and smiling sky. They have in this country neither nightingales, thrushes, linnets, nor blackbirds, at least, none with the same notes as ours; but every now and then, from the snowy cherry trees, there came a wild snatch of trilling melody, like the clear ringing song of a canary bird. My companion did not know the minstrel by his note; but I never heard a more brilliant and joyful strain, or one more fitted to the bright hour of opening day,--always excepting the lark's, that triumphant embodied spirit of song.[99] The blackbird's song is to me the sweetest in the world,--sad and soft, and rich as the sunsets through which it is heard. The quarry which we visited is an extensive vein of fine dark-coloured granite. We dismounted, and walked among the workmen to see them at their various processes. This quarry, and one at a short distance, merely supply the blocks of granite, which, being detached from the main stone, are piled upon cars, and sent down an inclined plane to the rail-road, by means of a powerful chain, which acts at once as a support and check, suffering the load to proceed slowly down the declivity, and at the same time sending up from the bottom, upon another track, the empty car from which the granite has