Some good farming and tidy out-houses, and dependencies, completed the resemblance, and made me think that this must be the dwelling of some of my own country people. How can they live here? Here, even in the midst of what is fair and peaceful in nature, I think my home would haunt me, and the far-off chiming of the waves against her white shores resound in my ears through the smooth flowing of the Schuylkill.[44] After pursuing a level uninteresting road for some time, we turned off to the right, and, standing on the brow of a considerable declivity, had a most enchanting glimpse of the Schuylkill and its woody shores. The river makes a bend just above the water-works, and the curving banks scooping themselves form a lovely little sunny bay. It was more like a lake, just here, than a flowing stream. The sky was so blessedly serene, and the air so still, that the pure deep-looking water appeared to sleep, while the bright hues of the heavens, and the glowing lints of the woody shores, were mirrored with wondrous vividness on its bosom. I never saw such gorgeousness, and withal such perfect harmony of colouring. The golden sky, the mingled green, brown, yellow, crimson, and dark maroon, that clothed the thickets; the masses of grey granite, with the vivid mossy green that clung round them; the sunny purple waters; the warm red colour of the road itself, as it wound down below, with a border of fresh-looking turf on either side of it; the radiant atmosphere of rosy light that hung over all; all combined to present a picture of perfect enchantment. The eye was drunk with beauty.[45] How I though t of Mr. ----. Indeed a painter would have gone crazy over it, and I, who am not a painter, was half crazy that I was not. Though if I had been, what would it have availed? Such colours are from God's pallet, and mortal hand may no more copy, than it could mingle them. We rode on through scenery of the same description, passing in our way a farm and dairy, where the cattle were standing, not in open pastureland, but in a corner of forest-ground, all bright with the golden shedding of the trees; it was very picturesque. A little runlet of water, too, that held the middle of a tangled ravine, ran glittering like a golden snake through the underwood, while the stems of the trees, and the light foliage on the edge of the thick woody screens, were bathed in yellow sunshine. All around was beautiful, and rich, and harmonious to the eye, and should have been so to the spirit. * * * * *