Page:Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (Volume 1).djvu/212

Rh of turning the sword into the pruning-hook. The redeemed ground is laid out with economy of space and much taste. We passed through copses, groves, and parterres, and came out upon a growth of firs encircling a bronze bust of a benefactor who had contributed to this adornment. As I looked at the children and various other happy groups we passed, I wished there were some arithmetic that could calculate the amount of happiness produced by a man who originated a public garden, and set it off against the results of the lives of those great conquerors whose effigies and trophies cumber the earth!

Our first impression of Frankfort is very agreeable. It has not the picturesque aspect of the other Continental towns, but it is clean, with broad streets and modern houses, and appears lively and prosperous, as if one might hve and breathe and get a living in it. M., true to her general preference of cleanliness and comfort to the picturesque, declares it is the only place she has seen since she left England she could be tempted to live in, while L., as true to her peculiar tastes, prefers the oldest, wretchedest German village, provided there is a ruined castle brooding over it, and plenty of fragments of towers, peasants in costume, &c.

" is the mother of Invention." I believe she is the mother of half our faculties, and so will you, dear C., when I tell you, you who