After dinner I passed
my time with the birds in the open air, wandering in the shady walks
which wind along under Pressy. The sun was brilliant and the air clear.
The midday orchestra of nature was at its best. Against the humming
background made by a thousand invisible insects there rose the delicate
caprices and improvisations of the nightingale singing from the
ash-trees, or of the hedge-sparrows and the chaffinches in their nests.
The hedges are hung with wild roses, the scent of the acacia still
perfumes the paths; the light down of the poplar seeds floated in the
air like a kind of warm, fair-weather snow. I felt myself as gay as a
butterfly. On coming in I read the three first books of that poem
"Corinne," which I have not seen since I was a youth. Now as I read it
again, I look at it across interposing memories; the romantic interest
of it seems to me to have vanished, but not the poetical, pathetic, or
moral interest.
June 18th.--I have just been spending three hours in the orchard under
the shade of the hedge, combining the spectacle of a beautiful morning
with reading and taking a turn between each chapter. Now the sky is
again covered with its white veil of cloud, and I have come up with
Biran, whose "Pensee" I have just finished, and Corinne, whom I have
followed with Oswald in their excursions among the monuments of the
eternal city.
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