Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/90

Rh exceeds all that I have hitherto imagined. When nature, in a perfected world, becomes a thanksgiving song of beauty, harmonious delight and magnificence, what will not life become, what praises shall we not sing? We are not bold enough, we are not rich enough in imagination, as we glance towards the kingdom of heaven beyond the grave; we are too poor in faith to conceive of the power and affluence of the Creator.

Palms, laurel trees, groves of bamboos, yellow jasmines, which fling their fragrant branches from stem to stem; the beautiful air filled with the purest life, all these whispered to me words and thoughts of that morning which is to be. And I walked alone through these magnificent avenues, amid those silent groves, where hundreds of splendid butterflies, all unknown to me, fluttered up out of the moist grasses, and I praised God in the name of all existence! How happy I was that morning!

“But the slaves, the slavery which surrounds this Eden,” you will say. Yes, I know; but slavery must cease, and the fetters of the slave fall from him; but the goodness and magnificence of God will remain for ever. I lived here in the contemplation of this, and a day will come when the slave shall do so, too.

The garden, or more correctly speaking, the park, is much neglected since the death of the old bishop, and since a terrible hurricane in 1848, which entirely destroyed the house, of which merely a ruin now remains, and injured many trees and statues: but I am pleased with the less trim condition of the park, because it all the more resembles, from that very cause, a beautiful natural scene.

I dined yesterday at the villa of Mr. and Mrs. S. with a select party. The dinner was served in the verandah opening into the garden, which afforded us a glorious view beyond it over the island. This garden was,