The Fields Fall Southward, Abrupt And Broken,
To The Low Last Edge Of The Long Lone Land,
If A Step Should Sound Or A Word Be Spoken
Would A Ghost Not Rise At The Strange Guest's Hand?
SWINBURNE'S Forsaken Garden.
On a grey, cheerless May afternoon, I visited what I might call the ruins
of this once bright abode - Longwood - at Cap Rouge.
Here the eccentric,
influential and scholarly historian of Canada and statesman, the Honorable
William Smith, spent the evening of his long and busy life. Whence the
name Longwood? Did the Hon. William bestow on his rustic home the name of
the residence where sojourned his illustrious contemporary - his admired
hero, Napoleon I. (born like himself in 1769), to commemorate his own
release from the cares of State? Was Cap Rouge and its quiet and sylvan
bowers to him a haven of rest like St. Helena might have been to the
Petit Caporal?
The locality, at present, can only attract from its woodland views. The
house, of one story, is about eighty feet in length by forty in breadth,
of wood, with an oval window over the entrance to light up that portion of
the large attic. Its roomy lower apartments and attics must have fitted it
admirably for a summer retreat. It is painted a dull yellow; the blinds
may have been once green. When I saw it, I found it as bleak, as forlorn,
as the snows and storms of many winters can well make a tenantless
dwelling.
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