Harriet Martineau

Deerbrook Harriet Martineau

Every town-bred person who travels in a rich country region, knows what it is to see a neat white house planted in a pretty situation, -in a shrubbery, or commanding a sunny common, or nestling between two hills, -and to say to himself, as the carriage sweeps past its gate, "I should like to live there,"-"I could be very happy in that pretty place." Transient visions pass before his mind's eye of dewy summer mornings, when the shadows are long on the grass, and of bright autumn afternoons, when it would be luxury to saunter in the neighbouring lanes; and of frosty winter days, when the sun shines in over the laurustinus at the window, while the fire burns with a different light from that which it gives in the dull parlours of a cit