NE Sunday, as bright and brilliant a day as ever glad ONE dened the eyesight, or sent thrilling pulses of health through the outworn body, I wandered, as it was then my habit, beyond the outskirts of New-York. My road led me past several suburban houses, pleasantly rising amid their green groves, and along the banks of the Hudson. A sacred silence was brooding every where, as if Nature, sympathizing with the solemn offices of the day, had consecrated an hour to meditation. Behind me lay the town with its masses of perpetual unquiet life; before me the sloops with their white wings were floating lazily on the surface of the stream; while all around were the green fields and the cheering sunshine. Those squads of boisterous strollers who usually select that day for the invasion of the sylvan solitudes, were not yet abroad, and only the insects with their small hum, or the birds with their sweet morning hymns, seemed to be alive in the midst of the infinite repose. After wandering for some hours, I turned into a rustic road which led directly down towards the river. A noble forest was planted on the one side of it, and on the other vast grainfields lay laughing in the sun, or listening to the complacent murmur of a brook that stole along in the midst of clumps of bushes and wild briers. About the half-worn path groups of cattle loitered, some cropping the young grass, and others looking contemplatively towards the distant shine of the stream, which flashed through the vista of trees in molten bands of silver. It was such a scene as Cuyp or Paul Potter would have loved to paint, if the native country of those artists had ever furnished them with so lovely and glorious a subject. But my walk soon brought a secluded country house into view,-a house not entirely adapted to the nature of the scenery, yet simple and unpretending in its architecture, and beautifully embowered amid elms and oaks. Several graceful fawns, and a noble elk, were stalking in the shade of the trees, apparently unconscious of the presence of a few dogs, and not caring for the numerous turkeys, geese, and other domestic animals that gabbled and screamed around them. Nor did my own approach startle the wild beautiful crea |