Page:Francesca Carrara 2.pdf/280

Rh Too feeble for exercise, his only enjoyment now was to sit in an arbour, reached with difficulty, that had been formed on a rising part of the ground. An old ash-tree extended its boughs overhead; and those which had been trained downwards, were latticed by a luxuriant honeysuckle, whose fairy trumpets hung in fragrant profusion. It was one of those thoroughly English gardens, still to be found in some of the old-fashioned parts of the country, where a mistaken taste has not severed la belle alliance between the useful and the agreeable.

I know nothing more pleasant than the half kitchen-, half flower-garden;—the few trees that extend a light shade—either the apple, with its spring shower of fair blossoms, tinted with the faintest crimson, and its summer show of fruit, reddening every day; or the cherry, with its scarlet multitude—berries more numerous than leaves. Below, long rows of peas put forth their white-winged flowers, tempting the small butterflies to flutter round their inanimate likenesses; or else of beans, whose fresh, sweet odour, when in bloom, might challenge competition with the sea gales of the spice islands. Then the deep glossy green of the gooseberry is so well relieved by the paler shade of the currant-bush; and alongside,