Yet the scene that opened below, before my gaze, was indeed wonderfully charming. A bright, semicircular basin, as clear as a mirror, whose circuit it would probably have required a full hour to make, lay amid the most luxuriant green meadows and a few tilled fields, in which the lighter hue of the young grain stood forth in strong relief. The shore was encircled by a dense border of sedges, whose brown tops, whenever a faint breeze blew, waved gently to and fro as though stirred by their own weight. The opposite bank, which rose in a gradual ascent, was clothed with a dark grove of firs, whose reddish trunks were reflected in the water, and around whose tops hovered flocks of crows and jays, whose harsh screams ever and anon interrupted the oppressive silence. The avenue of poplars led directly to the harbor, which was marked by half a dozen gayly painted boats. These had been drawn up on the sand, but their owners had not thought it worth while to fasten them to a stake, as if it would be quite impossible for them to voluntarily drift away from the shore. Near these skiffs I was surprised by the sight of a steamer, similar in size and form to the coasters so much used in the German Ocean. The light green garlands of fir, with which it was profusely adorned, formed a strange contrast to its slanting smokestack and the damaged condition of the deck-rail. But I looked about me in vain for some person who might have told me how this craft, which must have once seen better days, had reached the quiet inland lake and been decked in its gay festal array, like a shame-faced old man holding a jubilee. Still keeping my eyes fixed on the opposite grove, I strolled slowly along the broad path by the shore of the lake, unheeding the sun, as a refreshing coolness rose from the water. But ere I had advanced a hundred paces I discovered, half hidden behind some tall lindens, several lonely buildings, a long, narrow, gable-roofed house, without any architectural ornamentation, which looked more like a store-house than a dwelling, yet showed by the little white curtains at the window-frames, and the flowering plants inclosed by trellis-work fences, that human beings lived there. A few low huts or sheds adjoined it in the rear, the long front faced the lake; but the view was here partly cut off by a little church or chapel, also of the plainest structure, and so low that a man on horseback might have easily glanced into the swallows' nests under its weather-beaten roof. Yet the poor little church, with its four blind arched windows and tiny steeple, looked cheerful and picturesque, for an ancient ivy had climbed the narrow rear wall, and, while the trunk clung naked and bare to the masonry, the luxuriant branches, twining over cornice and roof, had flung a thick mantle over the shoulders of the shabby building.