Page:Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (Volume 1).djvu/31

28 waves for a bass. For one sweet singing-bird with us, I think there are twenty here; and, included in this twenty, the nightingale, the blackbird, the lark, and the cuckoo! The note of the English blackbird is electrifying, but yet I have heard none sweeter than our woodthrush, that little hermit of our solitudes. You would forgive me, dear C., for observing some contrasts that may perchance strike you as unpatriotic, if,

I could send over to you one of these picturesque cottages (any one of them), draped with ivy to the very top of the chimneys, and set it down beside our unsightly farmhouses.

At Brixton we again met Captain Hall. He had had the disappointment of finding that his friend, Mr. Wilberforce, was absent; and intent on filling for us every little vacant niche with some pleasure, he had asked leave to show us a picture of the father in the son's library. H., in the effectiveness of his kindness, reminds me of L. M., and seems to me what our Shaker friends would call the "male manifestation" of her ever-watchful and all-accomplishing spirit.

We met two of the young Wilberforces, and begged the pleasure of taking hands with them for their grandfather's sake. The boy bears a strong resemblance to him, and is, I hope, like his grandfather, sent into the world on an errand of mercy. Such a face is the superscription, by the finger of God, of a soul of benevolence.