Our afternoons were usually spent in the shade of the garden or
piazza. Sometimes, I sat by her while she was sketching. At others,
she helped me to dress and train my garden-vines. Now and then
we renewed our rambles of the morning, heedfully observing the
different aspects of the same scenes and object, which had then
delighted us, under the mellowing smiles of the sun at its decline.
With books, music, and chess, our evenings passed away without
our consciousness; and day melted into night, and night departed
and gave place to the new-born day, as quietly as if life had, in
truth, become to us a great instrument of harmony, which bore us
over the smooth seas of Time, to the gentle beating of fairy and
unseen minstrelsy. Truly, then, we were two happy children. The
older children of this world, stimulated by stronger tastes and more
lofty indulgences, may smile at the infantile simplicity of such
resources and modes of enjoyment. They were childish, but perhaps
not the less wise for that. Infancy lies very near to heaven.
Childhood is a not unfit study for angels; and happy were it for us
could we maintain the hearts and the hopes of that innocent period
for a longer day within our bosoms. In our world we grow too fast,
too presumptuously. We live on too rich food, moral and intellectual.
The artifices of our tastes prove most fatally the decline of our
reason. But, for us--we two linked hearts, so segregated from all
beside--we certainly lived the lives of children for a while. But
we were not to live thus always. In some worldly respects, I was
still a child: I cared little for its pomps, its small honors, its
puny efforts, its tinselly displays. But I had vices of mind--vices
of my own--sufficient to embitter the social world where all seems
now so sweet--where all, in truth, WAS sweet, and pure, and worthy
--and which might, under other circumstances, have been kept so to
the last. I am now to describe a change!