which I once felt about the ruins of Kenilworth Castle. For thousands of years this piece of ground hath wrought its tasks. Old slumberous forests used to darken it; innumerable deer have trampled across it; foxes have blinked through its bushes; and wolves have howled and growled as they pattered along its rustling leaves with empty maws. How many birds; how many flocks of pigeons, thousands of years ago; how many hawks dashing wildly among them; how many insects, nocturnal and diurnal; how many mailed bugs, and limber serpents gliding among mossy stones, have had possession here before my day! It will not be long before I too shall be as wasted and recordless as they. Doubtless the Indians made this a favorite resort. Their sense of beauty in natural scenery is proverbial. Where else, in all this region, could they find a more glorious amphitheatre ? But thick-studded forests may have hidden from them the scenic glory, and left it to solace another race. I walk over the ground wondering what lore of wild history I should read if all that ever lived upon this round and sloping hill had left an invisible record, unreadable except by such eyes as mine, that seeing, see not, and not seeing, do plainly see. Then, while I stand upon the crowning point of the hill, from which I can behold every foot of the hundred acres, and think what is going on, what gigantic powers are silently working, I feel as if all the workmanship that was stored in the Crystal Palace was not to be compared with the subtle machinery all over this round. What chemists could find solvents to liquefy these rocks? But soft rains and roots small as threads dissolve them and recompose them into stems and leaves. What an up roar as if a hundred stone quarries were being wrought, if one should attempt to crush with hammers all the flint and quartz which the stroke of the dew powders noiselessly! All this turf is but a camp of soldier-roots, that wage their battle upon the elements with endless victory. There is a greater marvel in this defiant thistle, which wearies the farmer's wits, taxed for its extermination, than in all the repositories of New York or London. And these mighty trees, how easily do they pump up and sustain supplies of moisture that it would require scores of rattling engines to lift! This farm, it is a vast laboratory, full of expert chemists. It is a vast shop, full of noiseless machinists. And all this is mine! These rocks that lie in bulk under the pasture trees, and all this moss that loves to nestle in its crevices and |