Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/254

240 description of the peace, innocence, and beauty of the Eden which that unfortunate Irishman had made for his home on the banks of the Ohio. This poetical description was one of the pieces that composed a reading-book for our schools, called "The American Orator;" and on special reading days, the boys in the first class were sure to compete with each other for this extract, on which to practise elocution. One feature of this little elysium into which "the serpent stole," was "a shrubbery that Shenstone might have envied." How we boys wondered who Shenstone was and where he lived, and what kind of shrubbery he really had around his garden! Then it made our voices quaver with emotion when the orator told us how Blennerhassett's young and lovely wife was driven out of their little Eden in the dead of winter, while "her tears froze as they fell."

If the poet saw many such sunsets in the year from his door as we witnessed from the rising ground overlooking his house from the east, they would account for his choice of locality. The Clent Hills were tinged with the rich purple mist in which the setting sun was sinking in the west. Neither of us ever saw it stand out in such fully-developed rotundity before. Instead of being apparently set in the face of the sky like an eye, it seemed to come out bodily, and to descend like a large round balloon, and we imagined we could