The country is the proper mediating ground for the reconciliation and the harmonizing of the two opposing natures, the moral and the mundane, which especially characterize poets, and Mr. Willis, perhaps, more than most men. The unlovely mask which is worn in cities in de be time for a new deluge if any bright spot on the surface of the earth could be so shut from you. No, no; there is no such 'right of property' possible in a republic. Fence out pigs we may, if we know how, and nobody leaves the gate open; but to fence out a genial eye from any corner of the earth which Nature has lov-fense or defiance of the envy and uncharitableingly touched with that pencil which never repeats itself; to shut up a glen or a waterfall for one man's exclusive knowing and enjoying; to lock up trees and glades, shady paths and haunts along rivulets-it would be an embezzlement by one man of God's gifts to all. A capitalist might as well curtain off a star, or have the monopoly of an hour. Doors may lock, but outdoors is a freehold to feet and eyes." In the same spirit he once said, speaking of the building of his bridge at Glenmary: "To be sure, the beggar may go down the bank on the road, and, entering by the other side, sit under it as well as I; but he is welcome. I like society sans gêne, where you may come in or go out without apology, or whistle, or take off your shoes; and I would give notice here to the beggary of Tioga that, in building a stone seat under the bridge, and laying the banks with greensward, I intend no sequestration of their privileges." ness around, is here laid ingenuously aside, and the better inner spirit is left to manifest itself in freedom. When the Idlewild talk once leaned toward this thought, Mr. Willis remarked that, catching a glimpse of his face in a shop mirror in New York, he was astonished at his own careworn, watchful, and ungenial look, and he could not believe that his head at any time gave such an index until his friends candidly assured him that such was his habitual expression-in Broadway. With his intuition of genius, and with genius's fraternization with the beautiful in every shape, the country is the true place for Mr. Willis to work. He comes at facts and philosophies by feeling rather than by hard logic, and while a sufficient suggestion of the world and its mysteries gets to him at his Idlewild home, in its pure and loving atmosphere the inspiration buds and blooms into bright and healthful life. Thus, by the magnetism of feeling, seizing truths for which others painfully dig and delve, the Storm King did not intervene (perhaps by his fancy is restive when in harness with a slow, way of fairly distributing the blessings of Provplodding intellect. He likes the suggestive rath-idence), is "Undercliff," the romantic home of er than the demonstrative in his mental compan-our poet's life-long, trusty friend (his "dear ionships. "That man," said he, as we came near in a country ramble, "with whom I have just been talking, is a good fellow enough in his way, profound as a polyglott, but too heavy for my mood. Just now, when I expected him to be enchanted with the mellow freshness of this evening air, he suffocated me with thoughts upon Schiller and Zschokke." Mr. Willis's impulsive temperament leads him into quick, though for that, perhaps, the more just, estimates of character. He forms likes and dislikes with a jump. We were once sitting with him on his Idlewild piazza, when a stranger, a proper man enough, presented himself. "How do you like him?" he asked us, when the visitor had departed. "Not at all." "Nor I; why, I can not exactly tell; but there is a reason, and I shall get at it by-and-by." With this gossip in-doors, let us again breathe the air without, and take a look at the social neighborhood of Idlewild. We have already alluded to the populous character of the region, both native and exotic, the indigenous farmer and the imported gentleman. Mr. Willis has some friends around him-brother poets, whom we must number with both or with neither of these classes, since poets belong by nature to town and country alike. First and foremost, across the river there, on the broad terrace at the base of mighty mural walls, which could be seen from the piazza if 29 "as he facetiously writes him), George P. Morris. "Morris and Willis!" what happy memories the refrain calls up of their united loves and labors, from the youthful Mirror times of "mi boy" and "the brigadier" to the sage Home Journal-ism of the mature philosophers. Directly opposite the home of General Morris is the studio of the painter Weir, at West Point; and on the way thither-islanded in the river-is the residence of the Misses Warner, the popular authors of "The Wide, Wide World," and "Dollars and Cents." To either home Mr. Willis can easily pull a skiff. On the other side, and in his daily ride to Newburgh, he passes "Cedarlawn," the beautiful retreat of the graphic historian Headley. If it were proper now for us to linger here, we could scarcely resist the double temptation of the landscape charms without, and the social delights within doors. Headley's villa was built, con amore, by the lamented Downing, whose own home, now in the possession of Mr. Alger, is one of the lions of Newburgh. We must not leave this part of the neighborhood without a visit to the unique "Fountain of Egeria," in the grounds of Mr. J. J. Monell. We say "grounds," but the marvel of Mr. Monell's gardening is, that while he is cooped up in his little share of a town block, the sentiment of rural retirement is so complete, it is difficult to believe yourself otherwise than in the quiet heart of vast acres of Nature's free- | living Present to the dead Past, has not written hold. Returning to Idlewild we shall pass, as we have passed before, the elegant mansion of Mr. Philip A. Verplanck, buried in the luxuriant woods of its promontory seclusion. It is this point which officiates as groomsman at the nuptials of the Hudson and the Moodna, and which comes so invitingly into the Idlewild river-pic tures. Across the glen, and crowning the heights of the opposite terrace, we catch a glimpse of the roofs of Mr. Roe's popular summer boardinghouse; and not far off, only that it is hidden from sight by intervening ridges, is the winsome village of Moodna, with its extensive paper-mill, under the administration of Messrs. Carson and Ide. Mr. Carson has made his architectural contribution to the vicinage in the recent erection of a villa, close by, in Cornwall. We must not forget the favorite school for boys here, conducted by Mr. Alfred Roe, or indeed the good people generally of the terrace-valley of Canterbury, and its throng of summer visitants in quest of country air and rural pleasures. Canterbury, in its quiet, aside position and with its gardens and grove-hidden cottages, is just the retreat for those who prefer rest and peace to a repetition, at Saratoga and Newport, of the wearisome dissipations they have left behind them. Idlewild sifts out pleasant society from the city deposits of summer lodgers in Canterbury and about. Besides the scenes of personal interest, Idlewild is beset with stories of by-gone days. Mr. Willis, with his characteristic preference of the half as much as we could wish of this chapter of his home surroundings. Let us hope that by-and-by he will supply this want; or, if not, that his neighbor Headley, who knows and loves the theme so well, will tell us all about the sacred Revolutionary land which Idlewild and Cedarlawn look out upon. How Washington lived his anxious life in the old "Head-quarters" at Newburgh; how his brave army lay for months back there in the lap of the hills, all ready to fall upon the enemy should he succeed in his scheme of passing the Highland gateway; how there still remain on the famous " 'campground" traces of its warlike occupancy, though the morass, which was then bridged with such painful engineering, is now covered with luxuriant meadow-grass and grain; how the quaint old stone houses still standing here were once the homes of Lafayette, and Rochambeau, and Knox, and, other gallant generals; how the weeds have sprung up on the site of the memorable "Temple" where Washington began his solemn reply to the calumnies of the mischievous "Newburgh Letters," with the affecting wordsas he put on his glasses-"Gentlemen, you see that I have grown not only gray but blind in your service!" And let us be told the thrilling story of West Point, its great perils and its happy escapes, with many other tales which the neighborhood will suggest, and which it will be most pleasant to hear. In the village of New Windsor, and passed always in the Newburgh ride to Idlewild, there still stands the veritable old dock at which all the stores of the army of the Revolution were 考 landed, while it was encamped among the mountains behind. In the same vicinity, too, one can still see the old mansion of the honored family of the Clintons. Mr. Verplanck's domain yet exhibits the well-preserved remains of an ancient battery and breast-work, very curious to see. While "down among the dead men," our memory carries us yet deeper into the Past-to the fabulous time when the adventurous explorer Hendrick Hudson pushed his fearless way up the great river, and calls to remembrance a certain passage in his "journal," all about his anchoring on the bar, off the very terrace on which Idlewild now stands, and how the shores-especially on the western side-gave tempting invitation to settlement. THE COTTAGE PORCH. This geographical preference of the astute navigator is greatly approved by some of the inhabitants hereabouts, and as much excepted to by others. Indeed the rival claims of the two shores of the river have engendered a little social warfare, which we may call the "battle of the banks." The dwellers on either hand look in pity upon the others, and think that it is to themselves alone that the lines have fallen in pleasant places. One gentleman, who has settled on the west side, after failing to find such a domain as he desired on his preferred other shore, has spitefully named his acres "Wrong-feet, to the quiet meadow below the cottage. side." For ourself, we could very well "be content with either-were the other dear charmer away." Lavish and loving as are the tributes which Mr. Willis has paid to his darling Brook (to which we come at last), the visitor will confess that they are no more-even if they thus suffice -than the telling of the feeling which the scene calls up in his own heart. It is one of those admirably perfect works of Nature which the poet or the painter can adorn no more than he may the lily. In times of flood, the stream grows so unruly and disports itself so roughly in its rocky cage as to forfeit its pet name of brook, though its propriety at most seasons subdues it to the diminutiveness of what Mr. Willis calls "a kind of Trenton Falls for one," and places it within the pale of the true sentiment of "landscapeloving," which, he says, is ever "more affectionate than reverential." Born back in the mountains, it has an easy, merry life in valley and wood, until it reaches THE PIG-TIGHT GATE the head of the ravine at the western edge of This rugged passage is a grand gallery of won- The Gradgrind visitors of the brook who af- At our last visit to Idlewild the torrent portion of the brook possessed three bridges-the upper, or "the foot-bridge" (though they are all for pedestrians only, of course), the middle, or "zigzag," and the lower one, just above the dam over which the waters fall quietly into the meadow. Winding wood-paths lead to and connect all these transits of the chasm. Our portfolio includes a peep at the steep way to the upper bridge, and a glimpse thence to the head of the brook. The frontispiece is from the hill side midway between the first and the zigzag | and waters-the venerable Woden himself; but passages. We have saved, too, a look up from the lowest of the bridges and of the "Drip Rock," which belongs to the same paragraph. Near by is a magnificent old boulder called "Chapel Rock." In the "dim religious light" of the glades beneath, worshipers may kneel when they have dipped their fingers in the holy water of the pure spring with which the spot is blessed. when, with his coming, there came too the record of the death of the belligerent Emperor Nicholas, he was immediately recognized as the disembodied spirit of the departed Czar, and as the Czar, or Russian Bear, he has been exalted to a shrine on the lawn. The likeness of the old forester to Ursus is so amusingly remarkable that we have admitted him into our gallery. As the waters of the ravine glide through the Once upon a time, during a freshet (and fresh- meadow they fall in with the ripples of Funnyets make mighty transformations here some- child Brook-a little stream which has stolen times), there came down with the rushing tor- quietly down from a convergent glen, over mossy rent a marvelous old stump, which, upon due rock and amidst tangled shrubbery on the opintroduction, proved to be a very great person-posite side of the precipice. Hand in hand, the age indeed a personage to whom all visitors make their best respects, and whom the Idlewilders hold in reverence. At first sight he seemed to be that powerful god of the woods sister brooks now ripple along to the wide bed of the Moodna and the wider waves of the Hudson. The growing fancy for rural homes, to which |