The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 | Page 3

white and lonely, though closely surrounded by others. Along the
brook, now the grass and herbage extended close to the water; now a
small, sandy beach. The wall of rock before described, looking as if it
had been hewn, but with irregular strokes of the workman, doing his

job by rough and ponderous strength,--now chancing to hew it away
smoothly and cleanly, now carelessly smiting, and making gaps, or
piling on the slabs of rock, so as to leave vacant spaces. In the
interstices grow brake and broad-leaved forest grass. The trees that
spring from the top of this wall have their roots pressing close to the
rock, so that there is no soil between; they cling powerfully, and grasp
the crag tightly with their knotty fingers. The trees on both sides are so
thick, that the sight and the thoughts are almost immediately lost
among confused stems, branches, and clustering green leaves,--a
narrow strip of bright blue sky above, the sunshine falling lustrously
down, and making the pathway of the brook luminous below. Entering
among the thickets, I find the soil strewn with old leaves of preceding
seasons, through which may be seen a black or dark mould; the roots of
trees stretch frequently across the path; often a moss-grown brown log
lies athwart, and when you set your foot down, it sinks into the
decaying substance,--into the heart of oak or pine. The leafy boughs
and twigs of the underbrush enlace themselves before you, so that you
must stoop your head to pass under, or thrust yourself through amain,
while they sweep against your face, and perhaps knock off your hat.
There are rocks mossy and slippery; sometimes you stagger, with a
great rustling of branches, against a clump of bushes, and into the midst
of it. From end to end of all this tangled shade goes a pathway scarcely
worn, for the leaves are not trodden through, yet plain enough to the
eye, winding gently to avoid tree-trunks and rocks and little hillocks. In
the more open ground, the aspect of a tall, fire-blackened stump,
standing alone, high up on a swell of land, that rises gradually from one
side of the brook, like a monument. Yesterday, I passed a group of
children in this solitary valley,--two boys, I think, and two girls. One of
the little girls seemed to have suffered some wrong from her
companions, for she was weeping and complaining violently. Another
time, I came suddenly on a small Canadian boy, who was in a hollow
place, among the ruined logs of an old causeway, picking
raspberries,--lonely among bushes and gorges, far up the wild
valley,--and the lonelier seemed the little boy for the bright sunshine,
that showed no one else in a wide space of view except him and me.
Remarkable items: the observation of Mons. S---- when B---- was

saying something against the character of the French people,--"You
ought not to form an unfavorable judgment of a great nation from mean
fellows like me, strolling about in a foreign country." I thought it very
noble thus to protest against anything discreditable in himself
personally being used against the honor of his country. He is a very
singular person, with an originality in all his notions;--not that nobody
has ever had such before, but that he has thought them out for himself.
He told me yesterday that one of his sisters was a waiting-maid in the
Rocher de Caucale. He is about the sincerest man I ever knew, never
pretending to feelings that are not in him,--never flattering. His feelings
do not seem to be warm, though they are kindly. He is so
single-minded that he cannot understand badinage, but takes it all as if
meant in earnest,--a German trait. Revalues himself greatly on being a
Frenchman, though all his most valuable qualities come from Germany.
His temperament is cool and pure, and he is greatly delighted with any
attentions from the ladies. A short time since, a lady gave him a
bouquet of roses and pinks; he capered and danced and sang, put it in
water, and carried it to his own chamber; but he brought it out for us to
see and admire two or three times a day, bestowing on it all the epithets
of admiration in the French language,--"Superbe! magnifique!" When
some of the flowers began to fade, he made the rest, with others, into a
new nosegay, and consulted us whether it would be fit to give to
another lady. Contrast this French foppery with his solemn moods,
when we sit in the twilight, or after B---- is abed, talking of Christianity
and Deism, of ways of life, of marriage, of benevolence,--in short, of
all deep matters of this world and the next. An evening or two since, he
began