The unsullied beauty and solitariness of this spot made me wish at firstthat I was a child once more, to climb and to swim, to revel in thesunshine and flowers, to be nearer in spirit to the birds and dragonflies and water-rats; then, that I could build a cabin and live thereall the summer long, forgetful of the world and its affairs, with nohuman creature to keep me company, and no book to read, or with only oneslim volume, some Spanish poet, let me say Melendez, forpreference--only a tiny selection from his too voluminous writings; forhe, albeit an eighteenth-century singer, was perhaps the last of thatlong, illustrious line of poets who sang as no others have sung of thepure delight-fulness of a life with nature. Something of this charm isundoubtedly due to the beauty of the language they wrote in and to thefree, airy grace of assonants. What a hard, artificial sound the rhymetoo occasionally has: the clink that falls at regular intervals as of astone-breaker's hammer! In the freer kinds of Spanish poetry there arenumberless verses that make the smoothest lines and lyrics of oursweetest and most facile singers, from Herrick to Swinburne, seem hardand mechanical by comparison. But there is something more. I doubt, forone thing, if we are justified in the boast we sometimes make that thefeeling for Nature is stronger in our poets than in those of othercountries. The most scientific critic may be unable to pick a hole inTennyson's botany and zoology; but the passion for, and feeling ofoneness with Nature may exist without this modern minute accuracy. Bethis as it may, it was not Tennyson, nor any other of our poets, that Iwould have taken to my dreamed-of solitary cabin for companionship:Melendez came first to my mind. I think of his lines to a cheesefly:

De donde alegre vienes Tan suelta y tan festiva, Las valles alegrando Veloz mariposilla?*