Paul Blake

ABOUT half way up the mountain road leading from Florence to the ancient city of Fiesole, rises a charming villa, the broad roof only of which is visible to the passer by.

It stands in its own grounds, which are surrounded by a high wall, and as the wearied traveller goes panting up the dusty road on which the sun pours the full strength of its beams, he is far - from suspecting that on the other side of that high rampart, from which the heat radiates as from a furnace, there lies a very paradise of freshness and verdure.

As our readers, however, have been specially invited to make the acquaintance of a youth who has spent some years of his life in this retired spot, we will ring the bell, and wait his coming in the garden.

The open gates reveal a little world of beauty; the very wall, which was so uncomfortable on the

road-side, is clothed upon the other with a drapery of leaves, and ornamented with fruit and flowers, which, from their perfume, we recognise at once to be the lemon and the orange.

This road winding to the left leads up to the house; but let us go straight forward for the present, where that grove of laurel offers such a pleasant shade, for though it is only the beginning of April, the sun is very powerful.

What a delicious perfume is wafted through the thick boughs of these ancient laurels! It springs from a bed of violets close by. And observe what a fine contrast is obtained between the dark alcove where we are standing and the sun-lit spot at the extremity. How intensely blue the sky! How vivid the green of the waving oleanders! and how white the old marble terrace, which seems to twinkle in the sun!

Let us draw nearer to that same terrace, for we are much mistaken if it does not afford a most extensive view.

A glorious view, indeed—a view once seen which can never be forgotten. We will sit down in this recess, cunningly devised and shaded to make a luxury of the prospect, and enjoy it at our ease.

The terrace stands upon the edge of a sloping bank faced with stone, and at its base, some twenty feet below, is a broad platform, planted with vines, which are beginning to look green and bright. Another sloping bank and another platform planted in the same way, are almost lost in a thick belt of trees which give rich promise of their summer ver

THE VALLEY OF THE ARNO.

dure. Raise your eye above and beyond the wood, and an endless variety of beauties will strike you in the sunny landscape.

There lies the beautiful valley of the Arno, backed by its fantastic mountains, which assume, according to their distance from us, almost every shade of blue. There is the city-sweet Florence— about which all of us have heard, and concerning which most of us have read so much. The Arno, you perceive, runs through its centre, and after escaping from the houses, meanders through green banks and brown woods, now lost, now reappearing, until it dwindles into a silver line in the far distance. Observe the villas; how they are scattered about us, each in its pretty setting of fresh spring green, dotted here and there with white specks, where marble statues or fountains catch the rays of the sun. All looks beautiful, smiling, and happy on this lovely spring morning; and fortunate, you will say, must be the youth who has the constant enjoyment of such a charming situation. You would be right, if our happiness depended upon such things but it does not. Happiness is a commodity which people generally carry about with them in their own hearts. Some may possess it who have few other possessions in the world to boast of; and others, again, who are very rich in worldly goods, are poor indeed in happiness. When I have told you something about young Paul (Paul Blake is his name), you will be able to answer for yourselves whether he is likely to be happier than

you.

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