But the traveller
would vainly look, now, to find the place as we describe it. The
garden is no longer green with fruits and flowers--the festoons
no longer grace the lowly portals--the white palings are down and
blackening in the gloomy mould--the roofs have fallen, and silence
dwells lonely among the ruins,--the only inhabitant of the place.
It has no longer a human occupant.
"Something ails it now--the spot is cursed."
Why this fate has fallen upon so sweet an abiding place--why the
villagers should have deserted a spot, so quiet and so beautiful--it
does not fall within our present purpose to inquire. It was most
probably abandoned--not because of the unfruitfulness of the soil,
or the unhealthiness of the climate--for but few places on the bosom
of the earth, may be found either more fertile, more beautiful, or
more healthful--but in compliance with that feverish restlessness
of mood--that sleepless discontent of temper, which, perhaps, more
than any other quality, is the moral failing in the character of the
Anglo-American. The roving desires of his ancestor, which brought
him across the waters, have been transmitted without diminution--nay,
with large increase--to the son.
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