Various
International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1
CHAPTER V
"Granted," said the Parson; "but what follows? The saying is good, but I don't see the application."
"A thousand pardons!" replied Dr. Riccabocca, with all the urbanity of an Italian; "but it seems to me, that if you had given the sixpence to the fanciullo—that is, to this good little boy—without telling him the story about the donkey, you would never have put him and yourself into this awkward dilemma."
"But, my dear sir," whispered the Parson, mildly, as he inclined his lips to the Doctors ear, "I should then have lost the opportunity of inculcating a moral lesson—you understand."
Dr. Riccabocca shrugged his shoulders, restored his pipe to his mouth, and took a long whiff. It was a whiff eloquent, though cynical—a whiff peculiar to your philosophical smoker—a whiff that implied the most absolute but the most placid incredulity as to the effect of the Parson's moral lesson.
"Still you have not given us your decision," said the Parson, after a pause.
The Doctor withdrew the pipe. "Cospetto!" said he. "He who scrubs the head of an ass wastes his soap."
"If you scrubbed mine fifty times over with those enigmatical proverbs of yours," said the Parson testily, "you would not make it any the wiser."
"My good sir," said the Doctor, bowing low from his perch on the stile, "I never presumed to say that there were more asses than in the story; but I thought I could not better explain my meaning, which is simply this—you scrubbed the ass's head, and therefore you must lose the soap. Let the fanciullo have the sixpence; and a great sum it is, too, for a little boy, who may spend it all upon pocket-money!"
"There, Lenny—you hear?" said the Parson, stretching out the sixpence. But Lenny retreated, and cast on the umpire a look of great aversion and disgust.
"Please, Master Dale," said he, obstinately, "I'd rather not."
"It is a matter of feeling, you see," said the Parson, turning to the umpire; "and I believe the boy is right."
"If it is a matter of feeling," replied Dr. Riccabocca, "there is no more to be said on it. When Feeling comes in at the door, Reason has nothing to do but to jump out of the window."
"Go, my good boy," said the Parson, pocketing the coin; "but stop! Give me your hand first. There—I understand you—good-by!"
Lenny's eyes glistened as the Parson shook him by the hand, and, not trusting himself to speak, he walked off sturdily. The Parson wiped his forehead, and sat himself down on the stile beside the Italian. The view before them was lovely, and both enjoyed it (though not equally) enough to be silent for some moments. On the other side the lane, seen between gaps in the old oaks and chestnuts that hung over the moss-grown pales of Hazeldean Park, rose gentle verdant slopes, dotted with sheep and herds of deer; a stately avenue stretched far away to the left, and ended at the right hand, within a few yards of a ha-ha that divided the park from a level sward of table-land gay with shrubs and flower-pots, relieved by the shade of two mighty cedars. And on this platform, only seen in part, stood the Squire's old-fashioned house, red brick, with stone mullions, gable-ends, and quaint chimney-pots. On this side the road, immediately facing the two gentlemen, cottage after cottage whitely emerged from the curves in the lane, while, beyond, the ground declining gave an extensive prospect of woods and cornfields, spires and farms. Behind, from a belt of lilacs and evergreens, you caught a peep of the parsonage-house, backed by woodlands, and a little noisy rill running in front. The birds were still in the hedgerows, only, as if from the very heart of the most distant woods, there came now and then the mellow note of the cuckoo.
"Verily," said Mr. Dale softly, "my lot has fallen on a goodly heritage."
The Italian twitched his cloak over him, and sighed almost inaudibly. Perhaps he thought of his own Summer Land, and felt that amidst all that fresh verdure of the North, there was no heritage for the stranger.
However, before the Parson could notice the sigh or conjecture the cause, Dr. Riccabocca's thin lips took an expression almost malignant.
"Per Bacco!" said he; "in every country I find that the rooks settle where the trees are the finest. I am sure that, when Noah first landed on Ararat, he must have found some gentleman in black already settled in the pleasantest part of the mountain, and waiting for his tenth of the cattle as they came out of the Ark."
The Parson turned his meek eyes to the philosopher, and there was in them something so deprecating rather than reproachful, that Dr. Riccabocca turned away his face and refilled his pipe. Dr. Riccabocca abhorred priests; but though Parson Dale was emphatically a parson, he seemed at that moment so little of what Dr. Riccabocca understood by a priest, that the Italian's heart smote him for his irreverent jest on the cloth. Luckily at this moment there was a diversion to that untoward commencement of conversation, in the appearance of no less a personage than the donkey himself—I mean the donkey who ate the apple.
* * * * *
CHAPTER VI
The Tinker was a stout swarthy fellow, jovial and musical withal, for he was singing a stave as he flourished his staff, and at the end of each refrain down came the staff on the quarters of the donkey. The Tinker went behind and sung, the donkey went before and was thwacked.
"Yours is a droll country," quoth Dr. Riccabocca; "in mine it is not the ass that walks first in the procession, who gets the blows."
The Parson jumped from the stile, and, looking over the hedge that divided the field from the road-"Gently, gently," said he; "the sound of the stick spoils the singing! O Mr. Sprott, Mr. Sprott! a good man is merciful to his beast."
The donkey seemed to recognize the voice of its friend, for it stopped short, pricked one ear wistfully, and looked up.
The Tinker touched his hat, and looked up too. "Lord bless your reverence! he does not mind it, he likes it. I would not hurt thee; would I, Neddy?"
The donkey shook his head and shivered; perhaps a fly had settled on the sore, which the chestnut leaves no longer protected.
"I am sure you did not mean to hurt him, Sprott," said the Parson, more politely I fear than honestly—for he had seen enough of that cross-grained thing called the human heart, even in the little world of a country parish, to know that it requires management, and coaxing, and flattering, to interfere successfully between a man and his own donkey—"I am sure you did not mean to hurt him; but he has already got a sore on his shoulder as big as my hand, poor thing!"
"Lord love 'un! yes; that vas done a playing with the manger, the day I gave 'un oats!" said the Tinker.
Dr. Riccabocca adjusted his spectacles, and surveyed the ass. The ass pricked up his other ear, and surveyed Dr. Riccabocca. In that mutual survey of physical qualifications, each being regarded according to the average symmetry of its species, it may be doubted whether the advantage was on the side of the philosopher.
The Parson had a great notion of the wisdom of his friend, in all matters not immediately ecclesiastical.
"Say a good word for the donkey!" whispered he.
"Sir," said the Doctor, addressing Mr. Sprott, with a respectful salutation, "there's a great kettle at my house—the Casino—which wants soldering: can you recommend me a tinker?"
"Why, that's all in my line," said Sprott, "and there ben't a tinker in the country that I would recommend like myself, thof I say it."
"You jest, good sir." said the Doctor, smiling pleasantly. "A man who can't mend a hole in his own donkey, can never demean himself by patching up my great kettle."
"Lord, sir," said the Tinker, archly, "if I had known that poor Neddy had two sitch friends in court, I'd have seen he was a gintleman, and treated him as sitch."
"Corpo di Bacco!" quoth the Doctor, "though that jest's not new, I think the Tinker comes very well out of it."
"True; but the donkey!" said the Parson, "I've a great mind to buy it."
"Permit me to tell you an anecdote in point," said Dr. Riccabocca.
"Well!" said the Parson, interrogatively.
"Once in a time," pursued Riccabocca, "the Emperor Adrian, going to the public baths, saw an old soldier, who had served under him, rubbing his back against the marble wall. The Emperor, who was a wise, and therefore a curious, inquisitive man, sent for the soldier, and asked him why he resorted to that kind of friction. 'Because,' answered the veteran, 'I am too poor to have slaves to rub me down.' The Emperor was touched, and gave him slaves and money. The next day, when Adrian went to the oaths, all the old men in the city were to be seen rubbing themselves against the marble as hard as they could. The Emperor sent for them, and asked them the same question which he had put to the soldier; the cunning old rogues, of course, made the same answer. 'Friends,' said Adrian, 'since there are so many of you, you will just rub one another!' Mr. Dale, if you don't want to have all the donkeys in the county with holes in their shoulders, you had better not buy the Tinker's!"
"It is the hardest thing in the world to do the least bit of good," groaned the Parson, as he broke a twig off the hedge nervously, snapped it in two, and flung the fragments on the road-one of them hit the donkey on the nose. If the ass could have spoken Latin, he would have said, "Et tu, Brute!" As it was, he hung down his ears, and walked on.
"Gee hup," said the Tinker, and he followed the ass. Then stopping, he looked over his shoulder, and seeing that the Parson's eyes were gazing mournfully on his protégé, "Never fear, your reverence," cried the Tinker kindly; "I'll not spite 'un."
* * * * *
CHAPTER VII
"Four o'clock," cried the Parson, looking at his watch; "half-an-hour after dinnertime, and Mrs. Dale particularly begged me to be punctual, because of the fine trout the Squire sent us. Will you venture on what our homely language calls 'pot luck,' Doctor?"
Now Riccabocca, like most wise men, especially if Italians, was by no means inclined to the credulous view of human nature. Indeed, he was in the habit of detecting self-interest in the simplest actions of his fellow-creatures. And when the Parson thus invited him to pot luck, he smiled with a kind of lofty complacency; for Mrs. Dale enjoyed the reputation of having what her friends styled "her little tempers." And, as well-bred ladies rarely indulge in "little tempers" in the presence of a third person, not of the family, so Dr. Riccabocca instantly concluded that he was invited to stand between the pot and the luck! Nevertheless—as he was fond of trout, and a much more good-natured man than he ought to have been according to his principles-he accepted the hospitality; but he did so with a sly look from over his spectacles, which brought a blush into the guilty cheeks of the Parson. Certainly Riccabocca had for once guessed right in his estimate of human motives.
The two walked on, crossed a little bridge that spanned the rill, and entered the parsonage lawn. Two dogs, that seemed to have sat on watch for their master, sprang toward him barking; and the sound drew the notice of Mrs. Dale, who, with parasol in hand, sallied out from the sash window which opened on the lawn. Now, O reader! I know that in thy secret heart, thou art chuckling over the want of knowledge in the sacred arcana of the domestic hearth, betrayed by the author; thou art saying to thyself, "A pretty way to conciliate little tempers, indeed, to add to the offense of spoiling the fish, the crime of bringing an unexpected friend to eat it. Pot luck, quotha, when the pot's boiled over this half hour!"
But, to thy utter shame and confusion, O reader, learn that both the author and Parson Dale knew very well what they were about.
Dr. Riccabocca was the special favorite of Mrs. Dale, and the only person in the whole county who never put her out by dropping in. In fact, strange though it may seem at first glance, Dr. Riccabocca had that mysterious something about him which we of his own sex can so little comprehend, but which always propitiates the other. He owed this, in part, to his own profound but hypocritical policy; for he looked upon woman as the natural enemy to man—against whom it was necessary to be always on the guard: whom it was prudent to disarm by every species of fawning, servility, and abject complaisance. He owed it also, in part, to the compassionate and heavenly nature of the angels whom his thoughts thus villanously traduced—for women like one whom they can pity without despising; and there was something in Signer Riccabocca's poverty, in his loneliness, in his exile, whether voluntary or compelled, that excited pity; while, despite the threadbare coat, the red umbrella, and the wild hair, he had, especially when addressing ladies, that air of gentleman and cavalier, which is or was more innate in an educated Italian, of whatever rank, than perhaps in the highest aristocracy of any other country in Europe. For, though I grant that nothing is more exquisite than the politeness of your French marquis of the old régime—nothing more frankly gracious than the cordial address of a high-bred English gentleman—nothing more kindly prepossessing than the genial good-nature of some patriarchal German, who will condescend to forget his sixteen quarterings in the pleasure of doing you a favor—yet these specimens of the suavity of their several nations are rare; whereas blandness and polish are common attributes with your Italian. They seem to have been immemorially handed down to him from ancestors emulating the urbanity of Caesar, and refined by the grace of Horace.
"Dr. Riccabocca consents to dine with us," cried the Parson hastily.
"If Madame permit!" said the Italian, bowing over the hand extended to him, which however he forebore to take, seeing it was already full of the watch.
"I am only sorry that the trout must be quite spoiled," began Mrs. Dale, plaintively.
"It is not the trout one thinks of when one dines with Mrs. Dale," said the infamous dissimulator.
"But I see James coming to say that dinner is ready?" observed the Parson.
"He said that three-quarters of an hour ago, Charles dear," retorted Mrs. Dale, taking the arm of Dr. Riccabocca.
* * * * *
CHAPTER VIII
While the Parson and his wife are entertaining their guest, I propose to regale the reader with a small treatise apropos of that "Charles dear," murmured by Mrs. Dale;—a treatise expressly written for the benefit of THE DOMESTIC CIRCLE.
It is an old jest that there is not a word in the language that conveys so little endearment as the word "dear." But though the saying itself, like most truths, be trite and hackneyed, no little novelty remains to the search of the inquirer into the varieties of inimical import comprehended in that malign monosyllable. For instance, I submit to the experienced that the degree of hostility it betrays is in much proportioned to its collocation in the sentence. When, gliding indirectly through the rest of the period, it takes its stand at the close, as in that "Charles dear" of Mrs. Dale—it has spilt so much of Its natural bitterness by the way that it assumes even a smile, "amara lento temperet risu." Sometimes the smile is plaintive, sometimes arch. Ex. gr.
(Plaintive.)
"I know very well that whatever I do is wrong, Charles dear."
"Nay, I am only glad you amused yourself so much without me, Charles dear."
"Not quite so loud! If you had but my poor head, Charles dear," &c.
Arch.
"If you could spill the ink anywhere but on the best table-cloth, Charles dear!"
"But though you must always have your own way, you are not quite faultless, own, Charles dear," &c.
In this collocation occur many dears, parental as well as conjugal; as—"Hold up your head, and don't look quite so cross, dear."
"Be a good boy for once in your life—that's a dear," &c.
When the enemy stops in the middle of a sentence, its venom is naturally less exhausted. Ex. gr.
"Really I must say, Charles dear, that you are the most fidgety person," &c.
"And if the house bills were so high last week, Charles dear, I should just like to know whose fault it was—that's all."
"Do you think, Charles dear, that you could put your feet anywhere but on the chintz sofa?"
"But you know, Charles dear, that you care no more for me and the children than," &c.
But if the fatal word spring up, in its primitive freshness, at the head of the sentence, bow your head to the storm. It then assumes the majesty of "my" before it; is generally more than simple objurgation—it prefaces a sermon. My candor obliges me to confess that this is the mode in which the hateful monosyllable is more usually employed by the marital part of the one flesh; and has something about it of the odious assumption of the Petruchian pater familias—the head of the family—boding, not perhaps "peace, and love, and quiet life," but certainly "awful rule and right supremacy." Ex. gr.
"My dear Jane—I wish you would just put by that everlasting tent-stitch, and listen to me for a few moments," &c.
"My dear Jane—I wish you would understand me for once—don't think I am angry-no, but I am hurt. You must consider," &c.
"My dear Jane—I don't know if it is your intention to ruin me; but I only wish you would do as all other women do who care three straws for their husbands' property," &c.
"My dear Jane—I wish you to understand that I am the last person in the world to be jealous; but I'll be d–d if that puppy, Capt. Prettyman," &c.
Now, if that same "dear" could be thoroughly raked and hoed out of the connubial garden, I don't think that the remaining nettles would signify a button. But even as it was, Parson Dale, good man, would have prized his garden beyond all the bowers which Spenser and Tasso have sung so musically, though there had not been a single specimen of "dear," whether the dear humilis, or the dear superba; the dear pallida, rubra, or nigra; the dear umbrosa, florens, spicata; the dear savis, or the dear horrida;—no, not a single dear in the whole horticulture of matrimony which Mrs. Dale had not brought to perfection. But this, fortunately, was far from being the case—the dears of Mrs. Dale were only wild flowers after all!
* * * * *
CHAPTER IX
In the cool of the evening Dr. Riccabocca walked home across the fields. Mr. and Mrs. Dale had accompanied him half way; and as they now turned back to the parsonage, they looked behind, to catch a glimpse of the tall, outlandish figure, winding slowly through the path amidst the waves of the green corn.
"Poor man!" said Mrs. Dale, feelingly; "and the button was off his wristband! What a pity he has nobody to take care of him! He seems very domestic. Don't you think, Charles, it would be a great blessing if we could get him a good wife?"
"Um," said the Parson; "I doubt if he values the married state as he ought."
"What do you mean, Charles? I never saw a man more polite to ladies in my life."
"Yes, but—"
"But what? You are always so mysterious, Charles dear."
"Mysterious! No, Carry; but if you could hear what the Doctor says of the ladies sometimes."
"Ay, when you men get together, my dear, I know what that means-pretty things you say of us. But you are all alike; you know you are, love!"
"I am sure," said the Parson, simply, "that I have good cause to speak well of the sex—when I think of you, and my poor mother."
Mrs. Dale, who, with all her "tempers," was an excellent woman, and loved her husband with the whole of her quick little heart, was touched. She pressed his hand, and did not call him dear all the way home.
Meanwhile the Italian passed the fields, and came upon the high-road about two miles from Hazeldean. On one side stood an old-fashioned solitary inn, such as English inns used to be before they became railway hotels—square, solid, old-fashioned, looking so hospitable and comfortable, with their great signs swinging from some elm tree in front, and the long row of stables standing a little back, with a chaise or two in the yard, and the jolly landlord talking of the crops to some stout farmer, who has stopped his rough pony at the well-known door. Opposite this inn, on the other side the road, stood the habitation of Dr. Riccabocca.
A few years before the date of these annals, the stage coach, on its way to London from a seaport town, stopped at the inn, as was its wont, for a good hour, that its passengers might dine like Christian Englishmen—not gulp down a basin of scalding soup, like everlasting heathen Yankees, with that cursed railway whistle shrieking like a fiend in their ears! It was the best dining-place on the whole road, for the trout in the neighboring rill were famous, and so was the mutton which came from Hazeldean Park.
From the outside of the coach had descended two passengers who, alone insensible to the attractions of mutton and trout, refused to dine—two melancholy-looking foreigners, of whom one was Signor Riccabocca, much the same as we see him now, only that the black suit was less threadbare, the tall form less meager, and he did not then wear spectacles; and the other was his servant. "They would walk about while the coach stopped." Now the Italian's eye had been caught by a mouldering dismantled house on the other side of the road, which nevertheless was well situated; half-way up a green hill, with its aspect due south, a little cascade falling down artificial rock-work, and a terrace with a balustrade, and a few broken urns and statues before its Ionic portico; while on the roadside stood a board, with characters already half effaced, implying that the house was to be "Let unfurnished, with or without land."
The abode that looked so cheerless, and which had so evidently hung long on hand, was the property of Squire Hazeldean. It had been built by his grandfather on the female side—a country gentleman who had actually been in Italy (a journey rare enough to boast of in those days), and who, on his return home, had attempted a miniature imitation of an Italian villa. He left an only daughter and sole heiress, who married Squire Hazeldean's father: and since that time, the house, abandoned by its proprietors for the larger residence of the Hazeldeans, had been uninhabited and neglected. Several tenants, indeed, had offered themselves; but your squire is slow in admitting upon his own property a rival neighbor. Some wanted shooting. "That," said the Hazeldeans, who were great sportsmen and strict preservers, "was quite out of the question." Others were fine folks from London. "London servants," said the Hazeldeans, who were moral and prudent people, "would corrupt their own, and bring London prices." Others, again, were retired manufacturers, at whom the Hazeldeans turned up their agricultural noses. In short, some were too grand, and others too vulgar. Some were refused because they were known so well: "Friends are best at a distance," said the Hazeldeans. Others because they were not known at all: "No good comes of strangers," said the Hazeldeans. And finally, as the house fell more and more into decay, no one would take it unless it was put into thorough repair: "As if one was made of money!" said the Hazeldeans. In short, there stood the house unoccupied and ruinous; and there, on its terrace, stood the two forlorn Italians, surveying it with a smile at each other, as, for the first time since they set foot in England, they recognized, in dilapidated pilasters and broken statues, in a weed-grown terrace and the remains of an orangery, something that reminded them of the land they had left behind.
On returning to the inn, Dr. Riccabocca took the occasion of learning from the innkeeper (who was indeed a tenant of the Squire's) such particulars as he could collect; and a few days afterward Mr. Hazeldean received a letter from a solicitor of repute in London, stating that a very respectable foreign gentleman had commissioned him to treat for Clump Lodge, otherwise called the "Casino;" that the said gentleman did not shoot—lived in great seclusion—and, having no family, did not care about the repairs of the place, provided only it were made weather-proof—if the omission of more expensive reparations could render the rent suitable to his finances, which were very limited. The offer came at a fortunate moment—when the steward had just been representing to the Squire the necessity of doing something to keep the Casino from falling into positive ruin, and the Squire was cursing the fates which had put the Casino into an entail—so that he could not pull it down for the building materials. Mr. Hazeldean therefore, caught at the proposal even as a fair lady, who has refused the best offers in the kingdom, catches at last at some battered old Captain on half-pay, and replied that, as for rent, if the solicitors client was a quiet respectable man, he did not care for that. But that the gentleman might have it for the first year rent free, on condition of paying the taxes and putting the place a little in order. If they suited each other, they could then come to terms. Ten days subsequently to this gracious reply, Signer Riccabocca and his servant arrived; and, before the years end, the Squire was so contented with his tenant that he gave him a running lease of seven, fourteen, or twenty-one years, at a rent nearly nominal, on condition that Signer Riccabocca would put and maintain the place in repair, barring the roof and fences, which the Squire generously renewed at his own expense. It was astonishing, by little and little, what a pretty place the Italian had made of it, and what is more astonishing, how little it had cost him. He had indeed painted the walls of the hall, staircase, and the rooms appropriated to himself, with his own hands. His servant had done the greater part of the upholstery. The two between them had got the garden into order. The Italians seemed to have taken a joint love to the place, and to deck it as they would have done some favorite chapel to their Madonna.
It was long before the natives reconciled themselves to the odd ways of the foreign settlers. The first thing that offended them was the exceeding smallness of the household bills. Three days out of the seven, indeed, both man and master dined on nothing else but the vegetables in the garden, and the fishes in the neighboring rill; when no trout could be caught they fried the minnows, (and certainly, even in the best streams, minnows are more frequently caught than trouts.) The next thing which angered the natives quite as much, especially the female part of the neighborhood, was the very sparing employment the two he creatures gave to the sex usually deemed so indispensable in household matters. At first indeed, they had no woman servant at all. But this created such horror that Parson Dale ventured a hint upon the matter, which Riccabocca took in very good part, and an old woman was forthwith engaged, after some bargaining—at three shillings a week—to wash and scrub as much as she liked during the daytime. She always returned to her own cottage to sleep. The man servant, who was styled in the neighborhood "Jackeymo," did all else for his master—smoothed his room, dusted his papers, prepared his coffee, cooked his dinner, brushed his clothes, and cleaned his pipes, of which Riccabocca had a large collection. But however close a man's character, it generally creeps out in driblets; and on many little occasions the Italian had shown acts of kindness, and, on some more rare occasions, even of generosity, which had served to silence his calumniators, and by degrees he had established a very fair reputation—suspected, it is true, of being a little inclined to the Black Art, and of a strange inclination to starve Jackeymo and himself,—in other respects harmless enough.
Signor Riccabocca had become very intimate, as we have seen, at the Parsonage. But not so at the Hall. For though the Squire was inclined to be very friendly to all his neighbors—he was, like most country gentlemen, rather easily huffed. Riccabocca had, if with great politeness, still with great obstinacy, refused Mr. Hazeldean's earlier invitations to dinner; and when the Squire found that the Italian rarely declined to dine at the Parsonage, he was offended in one of his weak points—viz., his regard for the honor of the hospitality of Hazeldean Hall—and he ceased altogether invitations so churlishly rejected. Nevertheless, as it was impossible for the Squire, however huffed, to bear malice, he now and then reminded Riccabocca of his existence by presents of game, and would have called on him more often than he did, but that Riccabocca received him with such excessive politeness that the blunt country gentleman felt shy and put out, and used to say, that "to call on Riccabocca was as bad as going to court."
But I left Dr. Riccabocca on the high-road. By this time he has ascended a narrow path that winds by the side of the cascade, he has passed a trellis-work covered with vines, from the which Jacheymo has positively succeeded in making what he calls wine—a liquid, indeed, that, if the cholera had been popularly known in those days, would have soured the mildest member of the Board of Health; for Squire Hazeldean, though a robust man, who daily carried off his bottle of port with impunity, having once rashly tasted it, did not recover the effect till he had had a bill from the apothecary as long as his own arm. Passing this trellis, Dr. Riccabocca entered upon the terrace, with its stone pavement smoothed and trim as hands could make it. Here, on neat stands, all his favorite flowers were arranged. Here four orange-trees were in full blossom; here a kind of summer-house or Belvidere, built by Jackeymo and himself, made his chosen morning-room from May till October; and from this Belvidere there was as beautiful an expanse of prospect as if our English Nature had hospitably spread on her green board all that she had to offer as a banquet to the exile.