fragrant silence of a

garden whence have

emanated the most

practical and poetic suggestions toward the greater dignity, comfort and elegance

of country life? If the aspect of our landscape yearly improves, in the

beauty of the houses, and in tasteful and picturesque rural treatment, our enjoyment

of it will be an obligation to Mr. Downing.

Not four days away from the city, I have not yet done roaming, bewildered with the summer's breath, through the garden, smelling of all the flowers, and

returning to lie upon the lawn, and bask, dreaming, in the July sun. What a cold word is "beautiful" to express the ecstasy which, in some choice moments of midsummer, suddenly overwhelms your mind, like an unexpected and exquisite thought.

I found a few late spring-flowers this morning, upon the lawn, and welcomed them with Robert Herrick's Greeting to the Violets:

Welcome, maids of honor,
You do bring

In the Spring,

And wait upon her.

She has virgins many,

Fresh and fair;

Yet you are

More sweet than any.

You're the Maiden Posies,

And so graced

To be placed

'Fore damask roses.

Yet though thus respected,

By-and-by,

You do lie,

Poor girls, neglected.

As I lay repeating these lines, whose melody is as delicate as the odor of the flowers they sing, I saw the steamer, crowded with passengers, hurrying away from the city. For none more than the Americans make it a principle to desert the city, and none less than Americans know how to dispense with it.

So we compromise by taking the city with us, and the country gently laughs us to scorn.

Although the day was tropical, on which we left New York, the "Reindeer" ran with us as if we had been mere Laplanders, and our way a frozen plain, instead of the broad, blue river. It is only in the steamer that the Hudson can be truly perceived and enjoyed. In the Indian summer, the western shore, seen from the railroad, is a swiftly unrolling panorama of dreams; yet the rush, and roar, and sharp steam-shriek would have roused Rip Van Winkle himself, and the dust would have choked and blinded him as he opened his eyes. The railroad will answer to deliver legislators at Albany, although which "side up" is a little uncertain. But the traveller who loves the law of beauty and pursues pleasure, will take the steamer and secure silence, cleanliness, sufficient speed, and an unencumbered enjoyment of the landscape.

If the trains are as thronged as the boats, they do well. It was curious to set forth upon a river-excursion, surrounded by hundreds bent upon similar summer pleasures, and yet see no red hand-book and no state-travelling carriage upon the forward deck, with a state-travelling countenance of an English milord on the inside, and the ruddy, round cheeks of statetravelling Abigails, in the rumble behind. These are

Rhenish reminiscences. But they are as much part of a journey up the Rhine as Drachenfels or St. Goar.

John Bull, upon his travels, is an old joke, as well to himself as others; and the amusement is never exhausted. Yet he is the boldest and best of travellers. He carries bottled ale to Nineveh, and black tea to the top of Mont Blanc, and haunts Norwegian rivers with the latest improved angling "flies ;" but he carries integrity, heroism, and intelligence, also. His patriotism amounts to prejudice; yet, if there is any cosmopolitan, it is John Bull. He takes pride, indeed, in asserting his prejudices, and insisting upon his black tea everywhere and in all societies. But his sublime skepticism of any excellence out of England is pleasanter than our crude mixture of boastfulness and subserviency. It was remarkable during the revolutions of 1848, in Europe, that there were no monarchists so absolute as the Americans. They declared, almost to a man, that Europe was not fit for republicanism. As if time would ripen republics from despotism, so that, like mellow pears, they would fall off without any confusion; or as if it were the habit of kings to educate their subjects to dispense with royalty.

But it is still very amusing to see how the English patronize the continent. They ascend the Rhine im

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perturbably. They evidently feel that they are conferring much more honor upon the landscape by looking at it, than ever the landscape can give them pleasure. This annual overflow of the continent with Cockneys is the point of Thackeray's "Kickleburys on the Rhine”—a picture whose breadth is hardly broader than the reality, and which requires you to be a traveller fully to enjoy.

This was the pith of my chat with Willow as we sped along under the Palisades, and threaded the Highlands.

Of course these comparisons soon led to the grand question which usually consumes the three hours. from Murray-street to West Point—the comparative claims of interest in the rivers themselves.

The first day upon the Rhine is an epoch in the traveller's memory. I came out of the Tyrol through Southern Germany to Heidelberg, and on a brilliant July morning took the steamer at Mayence for Boppart, a few miles above Coblentz, and not far below St. Goar. It was a soft, windless day. I lay in the very bow of the boat, with a Scotch boy going home for the summer from his school in Zurich. All day he buzzed in my ears stories of Switzerland and Scotland, and through his words I saw the misty and snowy grandeur of each. Our way was straight over the gleaming river, by the open spaces of Nassau