Turned the wheel of a mill below, is visible a dam,
creating a small pond in May, June and July, a favorite bathing place,
we are told, for the thrushes, robins and other songsters of the
adjoining groves. This tiny runlet is fringed with several varieties
of ferns, dog-tooth violets and other algae - (From L'Opinion
Publique.)
SPENCER OR BAGATELLE COTTAGE.
"We have many little Edens
Scattered up and down our dales;
We've a hundred pretty hamlets,
Nestling in our fruitful vales,
Here the sunlight loves to linger,
And the summer winds to blow,
Here the rosy spring in April,
Leapeth laughing from the snow."
On the western corner of the Spencer Grange property, and dependant to it,
can be seen from the road, Bagatelle - a long, straggling, picturesque
cottage, in the Italian style, with trees, rustic seats, walks and a
miniature flower-garden round it; a small prospect pavillion opens on the
St. Lewis road, furnishing a pretty view of the blue range of mountains to
the north; in summer it peeps from under clusters of the green or purple
leaves of some luxuriant Virginian creepers - our American ivy - which
climb round it. Bagatelle was generally occupied by an attache of
Spencer Wood, in the days of the Earl of Elgin and Sir Edmund W. Head.
Bagatelle is a quiet little nest, where our Canadian Laureate, Frechette,
might be tempted to pen an invitation to his brother bard of the city,
LeMay, somewhat in the manner of the soft warbler of Albion towards his
friend the Revd. P. D. Maurice:
"Where, far from smoke or noise of town,
I watch the twilight falling brown
All round a careless ordered garden,
Close to the ridge of a noble down.
You'll have no scandal while you dine,
But honest talk and wholesome wine,
And only hear the magpie gossip
Garrulous under a roof of pine.
For groves of pine on either hand,
To break the blast of winter, stand;
And further on the hoary channel
Tumbles a breaker on chalk and sand."
The poet has sometimes received as well as sent out poetical invitations.
Here is one from Water Savage Landor.
"I entreat you, Alfred Tennyson,
Come and share my haunch of venison,
I have, too, a bin of claret,
Good, but better when you share it.
Though 'tis only a small bin
There's a stock of it within,
And, as sure as I'm a rhymer,
Half a butt of Rudesheimer,
Come, among the sons of men is none
Welcomer than Tennyson?"
THE WOODFIELD OF THE PAST.
"Deambulatio per loca amoena." - Frascatorius
"Unquestionably the most ornate and richly laid-out estate around Quebec
is Woodfield, formerly the elegant mansion of the Honorable Wm.
