Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1859 edition. Excerpt: ... "Oh speak the joy I ye whom the sudden tear Surprises often, while you look around, And nothing strikes your eye but sights of bliss; An elegant sufficiency, content, Retirement, rural quiet, friendship, books, Ease and alternate labour, useful life, Progressive virtue, and approving Heaven."--thomson. "He (Cowper) had at one tune five rabbits, three hares, two guineapigs, a magpie, a jay, and a starling; besides two goldfinches, two canarybirds, and two dogs. It is amazing how the three hares can find room to gambol and frolic (as they certainly do) in his small parlour. I forgot to enumerate a squirrel, which used to play with one of the hares continually."--Lady. Heskkth. Eighteen hundred and twenty-four was the year which changed the imaginary "cousin" of the foregoing correspondence into an actual wife, and commenced the happier half of Mr Wilson's history. With a very superior understanding, and with accomplishments of a high order, Mrs Wilson was able to appreciate her husband's rare endowments. Fond of natural history herself, she entered, with wifely zeal, into his various pursuits--his gardening, his literary labours, his zoological friendships; and there was nothing beautiful in nature or grand in authorship of which her appreciation, so quick and true, did not double the enjoyment. At the same time, as already indicated, her earlier experience of the hopes and consolations conveyed in the gospel made her pre-eminently a help-meet to one whose spirit was now prepared to welcome a joy which the world can neither give nor take away, and whose reserved but keenly observant nature required, rather than sermons or books, the light of a living epistle; and, long before going hence, she had the happiness of knowing how entire was...