grew in myriads, and the mingled perfume which exhaled from them, and deliciously intoxicated the senses, their colours, their variety, the cool pure air which we breathed, every thing united to arrest our footsteps. Nature has bestowed the charms of fairy-land upon this spot. Almost every flower was filled with exquisite juices, and furnished the bees with abundant materials for the fabrication of their honey, which they deposited in every hollow rock and tree.” This description, which no doubt falls far short of the reality--for what language can equal the beauties of nature?--reminds me strongly of Spenser’s noble picture of the Gardens of Adonis. Poetry itself, however, with all its metaphors and picturesque expressions, is faint and dim compared with the splendour of a summer landscape, where earth, air, and sea unite their rich hues and sublime aspect to entrance and dazzle the eye. But our old bard, whom no man ever excelled in minute painting of inanimate nature, contrives, by careful and repeated touches, to unfold before the imagination an exquisite view. “There,” says he, speaking of the gardens of the Assyrian youth, “There is continual spring, and harvest there Continual, both meeting at one time: For both the boughs do laughing blossoms bear And with fresh flowers deck the wanton prime, And eke at once the heavy trees they climb, Which seem to labour under their fruit’s load: The while the joyous birds make their pastime, Among the shady leaves, their sweet abode, And their true loves without suspicion tell abroad. * * * * * And all about grew every sort of flower, To which sad lovers were transformed of yore,” &c. The dwellings which the few colonists, who had been led by poverty so far from the Cape, erected in the midst of this smiling scene, offered a striking contrast with it. Huts covered with earth, like the dens of wild animals, in which the inhabitants passed the night stretched upon a buffalo’s hide, afforded shelter to men who lived in plenty, and were thus badly lodged from mere idleness. It is now inhabited by Englishmen, and the contrast, it may well be imagined, no longer exists.