Mine too--whose else?--thy costly fruit-garden, with its sun-baked southern wall; the ampler pleasure-garden, rising backwards from the house in triple terraces, with flower-pots now of palest lead, save that a speck here and there, saved from the elements, bespeak their pristine state to have been gilt and glittering; the verdant quarters backwarder still; and, stretching still beyond, in old formality, thy firry wilderness, the haunt of the squirrel, and the day-long murmuring woodpigeon, with that antique image in the centre, God or Goddess I wist not; but child of Athens or old Rome paid never a sincerer worship to Pan or to Sylvanus in their native groves, than I to that fragmental mystery. Was it for this, that I kissed my childish hands too fervently in your idol worship, walks and windings of BLAKESMOOR! for this, or what sin of mine, has the plough passed over your pleasant places? I sometimes think that as men, when they die, do not die all, so of their extinguished habitations there may be a hope--a germ to be revivified. POOR RELATIONS A poor relation--is the most irrelevant thing in nature,--a piece of impertinent correspondency,--an odious approximation,--a haunting conscience,--a preposterous shadow, lengthening in the noontide of your prosperity,--an unwelcome remembrancer,--a perpetually recurring mortification,--a drain on your purse,--a more intolerable dun upon your pride,--a drawback upon success,--a rebuke to your rising,--a stain in your blood,--a blot on your scutcheon,--a rent in your garment,--a death's head at your banquet,--Agathocles' pot,--a Mordecai in your gate,--a Lazarus at your door,--a lion in your path,--a frog in your chamber,--a fly in your ointment,--a mote in your eye,--a triumph to your enemy, an apology to your friends,--the one thing not needful,--the hail in harvest,--the ounce of sour in a pound of sweet.