Page:Romance & Reality 2.pdf/334

332 a play. It was literally hidden in a grove, or thicket rather, of orange-trees, at that most beautiful season of their year, when one branch is bowed down with its weight of golden fruit—on another the orange is still of a bright green; while the more shaded boughs are yet in the first luxuriance of their peculiarly odoriferous and delicate flowers—perhaps one of the softest and most beautiful whites in nature. There were but a few cottages, each of them covered with a luxuriant vine, whose glossy verdure reflected back every ray of the setting sun. It was a saint's day, and the peasants were all out of doors. There were two or three groups of dancers, and the rest were either gathered in a ring round them, or scattered on the grass beneath a few large old chestnut-trees, that must have seen many such generations. The peasants themselves were, as a painter would have said, excellent accessories to the scene: the women were, many of them, pretty; and their profuse black hair, bound up with that simplicity, which is the perfection of good taste. Uniformity in costume is very picturesque. To name a familiar instance:—how well a family of sisters dressed alike always looks! Each separate individual may be bad; still, as a