That tall white house, what a place it holds in my fond recollection. It was perfectly an old parsonage, and behind it lay a garden larger than our city orchard, sloping gently down, with a profusion of fruit and flowers, bounded by high walls, and the central walk terminating in a door, beyond which lay the scene of our greatest enjoyment. A narrow slip of grass, fringed with osiers and alders and willows, alone separated the wall from a very clear, lovely stream, which winding half round an extensive common, turned a mill. This small river abounded with fish, and we soon became expert anglers; besides which, on creeping to some distance by a path of our own discovery, we could cross the stream on a movable plank, and take a wide range through, the country. This removal was a double resource: it invigorated my bodily frame, until I outgrew and out-bloomed every girl of my age in the neighborhood, while really laying a foundation for many years of uninterrupted health, and a constitution to defy the change of climate for which I was destined; while it won me from the sickening, enervating habit of sedentary enjoyment over the pages of a book, which, added to the necessary studies and occupations, was relaxing alike the tone of the bodily and mental frame. From the polluted works of man, I was drawn to the glorious works of God; and never did bird of the air or beast of the field more luxuriate in the pure bright elements of nature than I did. All the poetical visions of liberty that had floated in my brain seemed now realized; all pastoral descriptions faded before the actual enjoyment of rural life. Sometimes wreathing garlands of, wild flowers, reclined on a sunny bank, while a flock of sheep strolled around, and the bold little lambs came to peep in our faces, and then gallop away in pretended alarm; sometimes tearing our clothes to tatters in an ardent hunt for the sweet filberts that hung high above our heads, on trees well fortified behind breastworks of bramble and thorn; sometimes cultivating the friendship while we quaffed the milk of the good-natured cows under the dairymaid's operation: all was freedom, mirth, and peace. Often would my father take his noble pointers preparatory to the shooting season, at once to try their powers and to ascertain what promise of future sport the fields presented. These were destructive expeditions in one sense. I remember the following dialogue, repeated to me by my brother, when we made our appearance at home after a day's demolition of wearing apparel. "Mr. B. this will never do; that girl cannot wear a frock twice without soiling it; nor keep it whole for a week: the expense will ruin us." "Well, my dear, if I am to be ruined by expense, let it come in the shape of the washerwoman's and linen-draper's bills, not in those of the apothecary and undertaker."