Page:Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (Volume 1).djvu/27

24 may fancy what a delightful stroll we had with this very pleasant meeting, and such accidental accessories to the lovely scenery as a ship in the distance, a rainbow dropping into the sea, and the notes of a cuckoo, the first I had ever heard. History, painting, poetry, are at every moment becoming real, actual.

Bon Church, at a short distance from the road, secluded from it by an interposing elevation, enclosed by a stone wall, and surrounded by fine old trees, their bark coated with moss, is, to a New-World eye, a picture "come to life." "Sixteen hundred and sixteen" said I to L., deciphering a date on a monument; "four years before there were any white inhabitants in Massachusetts." "Then," she replied, "this is an Indian's grave." Her eyes were bent on the ground. She was in her own land; she looked up and saw the old arched and ivied gateway, and smiled—the illusion had vanished.

have passed a pleasant rainy day at Ventnor. The Halls are here too, and we make frequent use of the piazza by which our parlours communicate; so our friendship ripens apace. We went, in spite of mist and runs, to pay another visit to Bon Church, to "get it by heart," Captain H. says; "into our hearts we certainly have got it, and taken a drenching into the bargain." But this was a cheap price