O my Victor, what a new-born day was now on earth, encamped in the glorious valley. The nightingales and the larks loudly sung its welcome, the rosechafers rustled round its lily garlands, and the eagle, riding on the highest cloud, surveyed it from mountain to mountain. How rurally all things surrounded the serpentine field-embracing Adour. The marble walls, not raised by human skill, surround its flower-beds like large vases, and the Pyrenees, with their high tops, watch over and protect the lowly scattered shepherd huts. Tranquil Tempe! May a storm never disturb thy gardens and thy murmuring Adour. May a stronger one never visit thee, than would gently rock the cradle of nature, or dash a bee from the honey-dew of the wheat-sheaf, or force but a single drop from the waterfall upon the flowers of thy shores. You must not think that I am placing my paintbrushes at my side to copy the heavenly rounded valley by the measure of art for you; I will let you peep into this picture-book of nature as chance shall turn each succeeding page. My stations will lead you through its different chambers, in which the rich dowry of Spring, like that of a king's daughter, is placed for show. But truly it is a more glorious thing to see the whole dowry disposed over the person of the royal bride herself. A servant seeking the chaplain, roused us both from our reverie. We saw him advance towards a gentleman standing on the banks of the Adour, who slowly turned down his rolled-up shirt-sleeves. It was the chaplain, who had been catching crabs during the storm, and had subsequently fished. As I knew that his hairy hand had worked for the food of the critical, as well as his own philosophy, with trowel and mortar, with pen and ink, I boldly advanced towards him, and told him what I was writing. But the coarse, obstinate, yet timid free-mason, coldly welcomed me in a language as broad as his own frosty visage. He despises biographers; for the windows of a philosophical audience are too high,--perhaps, as in ancient temples, in the roof,--so that they cannot see into the streets of real life, as, according to Winkelmann, the Roman windows were architecturally as high. Lord Rochester is said to have been continually drunk during a whole quintennium; but such a chaplain is capable of being _sober_ for an entire decennium. A man like this bites the buds of all powerful truths, experiences, and fictions, as ants bite the buds from corn-seeds, that they may not fructify, but wither and die and form building materials.