Conceive, closely congregated,
      a million of the largest and most resplendent tulips! Only thus
      can the reader get any idea of the picture I would convey. And
      then the stately grace of the clean, delicately-granulated
      columnar stems, the largest four feet in diameter, at twenty from
      the ground. The innumerable blossoms, mingling with those of
      other trees scarcely less beautiful, although infinitely less
      majestic, filled the valley with more than Arabian perfumes. The general floor of the amphitheatre was grass of the same
      character as that I had found in the road; if anything, more
      deliciously soft, thick, velvety, and miraculously green. It was
      hard to conceive how all this beauty had been attained. I have spoken of two openings into the vale. From the one to the
      northwest issued a rivulet, which came, gently murmuring and
      slightly foaming, down the ravine, until it dashed against the
      group of rocks out of which sprang the insulated hickory. Here,
      after encircling the tree, it passed on a little to the north of
      east, leaving the tulip tree some twenty feet to the south, and
      making no decided alteration in its course until it came near the
      midway between the eastern and western boundaries of the valley. At this point, after a series of sweeps, it turned off at right
      angles and pursued a generally southern direction meandering as
      it went—until it became lost in a small lake of irregular figure
      (although roughly oval), that lay gleaming near the lower
      extremity of the vale. This lakelet was, perhaps, a hundred yards
      in diameter at its widest part. No crystal could be clearer than
      its waters. Its bottom, which could be distinctly seen, consisted
      altogether, of pebbles brilliantly white. Its banks, of the
      emerald grass already described, rounded, rather than sloped, off
      into the clear heaven below; and so clear was this heaven, so
      perfectly, at times, did it reflect all objects above it, that
      where the true bank ended and where the mimic one commenced, it
      was a point of no little difficulty to determine. The trout, and
      some other varieties of fish, with which this pond seemed to be
      almost inconveniently crowded, had all the appearance of
      veritable flying-fish. It was almost impossible to believe that
      they were not absolutely suspended in the air. A light birch
      canoe that lay placidly on the water, was reflected in its
      minutest fibres with a fidelity unsurpassed by the most
      exquisitely polished mirror. A small island, fairly laughing with
      flowers in full bloom, and affording little more space than just
      enough for a picturesque little building, seemingly a
      fowl-house—arose from the lake not far from its northern shore—to
      which it was connected by means of an inconceivably light-looking
      and yet very primitive bridge. It was formed of a single, broad
      and thick plank of the tulip wood. This was forty feet long, and
      spanned the interval between shore and shore with a slight but
      very perceptible arch, preventing all oscillation. From the
      southern extreme of the lake issued a continuation of the
      rivulet, which, after meandering for, perhaps, thirty yards,
      finally passed through the “depression” (already described) in
      the middle of the southern declivity, and tumbling down a sheer
      precipice of a hundred feet, made its devious and unnoticed way
      to the Hudson. The lake was deep—at some points thirty feet—but the rivulet
      seldom exceeded three, while its greatest width was about eight. Its bottom and banks were as those of the pond—if a defect could
      have been attributed, in point of picturesqueness, it was that of
      excessive neatness. The expanse of the green turf was relieved, here and there, by an
      occasional showy shrub, such as the hydrangea, or the common
      snowball, or the aromatic seringa; or, more frequently, by a
      clump of geraniums blossoming gorgeously in great varieties. These latter grew in pots which were carefully buried in the
      soil, so as to give the plants the appearance of being
      indigenous. Besides all this, the lawn’s velvet was exquisitely
      spotted with sheep—a considerable flock of which roamed about the
      vale, in company with three tamed deer, and a vast number of
      brilliantly-plumed ducks. A very large mastiff seemed to be in
      vigilant attendance upon these animals, each and all. Along the eastern and western cliffs—where, toward the upper
      portion of the amphitheatre, the boundaries were more or less
      precipitous—grew ivy in great profusion—so that only here and
      there could even a glimpse of the naked rock be obtained. The
      northern precipice, in like manner, was almost entirely clothed
      by grape-vines of rare luxuriance; some springing from the soil
      at the base of the cliff, and others from ledges on its face. The slight elevation which formed the lower boundary of this
      little domain, was crowned by a neat stone wall, of sufficient
      height to prevent the escape of the deer. Nothing of the fence
      kind was observable elsewhere; for nowhere else was an artificial
      enclosure needed:—any stray sheep, for example, which should
      attempt to make its way out of the vale by means of the ravine,
      would find its progress arrested, after a few yards’ advance, by
      the precipitous ledge of rock over which tumbled the cascade that
      had arrested my attention as I first drew near the domain. In
      short, the only ingress or egress was through a gate occupying a
      rocky pass in the road, a few paces below the point at which I
      stopped to reconnoitre the scene. I have described the brook as meandering very irregularly through
      the whole of its course. Its two general directions, as I have
      said, were first from west to east, and then from north to south. At the turn, the stream, sweeping backward, made an almost
      circular loop, so as to form a peninsula which was very nearly an
      island, and which included about the sixteenth of an acre. On
      this peninsula stood a dwelling-house—and when I say that this
      house, like the infernal terrace seen by Vathek, “etait d’une
      architecture inconnue dans les annales de la terre,” I mean,
      merely, that its tout ensemble struck me with the keenest sense
      of combined novelty and propriety—in a word, of poetry—(for, than
      in the words just employed, I could scarcely give, of poetry in
      the abstract, a more rigorous definition)—and I do not mean that
      merely outre was perceptible in any respect. In fact nothing could well be more simple—more utterly
      unpretending than this cottage.