TREES, GROVES, AND GARDENS.

MILTON, during his travels in Italy in his youth, visited the abbey of Vallambrosa; and hence, speaks in his great poem of the number of the fallen angels,

"who lay entranced,

Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks

In Vallambrosa, where the Etrurian shades
High overarch'd embower."

The site of the abbey is in the Florentine territory, at a distance of twenty miles from the city, in one of the solitudes of the Apennine mountains. The situation is that of a small piece of table land, at a considerable elevation, completely enclosed on the north, south, and east, with a semi-circular ridge, the steep acclivities of which are clothed to their summits with woods of ancient fir, oak, and beech, interspersed occasionally with grassy glades and mountain streams. The higher elevations command a magnificent view of Florence in the distance, the beautiful valley of the Arno, the neighbouring forest scenery, the rocks and torrents, with the antique towers of the abbey below, from which the ear may catch the swell of the organ, and the voices of the choir. This is the supposed original of the poet's description of paradise, when visited by Satan :—

"So on he fares, and to the border comes

Of Eden, where delicious Paradise,

Now nearer, crowns with her inclosure green,
As with a rural mound, the champaign head
Of a steep wilderness, whose hairy sides
With thicket overgrown, grotesque and wild,
Access denied; and overhead up grew
Insuperable height of loftiest shade,
Cedar, and pine, and fir, and branching palm,
A sylvan scene; and as the ranks ascend
Shade above shade, a woody theatre

Of stateliest view. Yet higher than their tops
The verd'rous wall of Paradise up sprung;
Which to our general sire gave prospect large
Into his nether empire neighbouring round."

The following language is put into the mouth of Adam, with reference to his primeval abode :

"About me round I saw

Hill, dale, and shady wood, and sunny plains,
And liquid lapse of murmuring streams; by these
Creatures that lived, and moved, and walk'd, or flew,
Birds on the branches warbling; all things smiled
With fragrance, and with joy my heart o'erflow'd."

The description is here formed upon the short sketch with which we are furnished in holy writ, which Milton's exuberant imagination largely amplifies, in various parts of his poem.

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The situation in which the original ancestors of the human race were placed by their Creator is very briefly noticed by the sacred historian. There was a garden eastward in Eden," with "every tree that is pleasant to the eye and good for food," and a "river went out of Eden to water the garden, and the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden." dence of our first parents, prepared expressly for the occupancy of beings free from blame, and fitted for continued happy existence. It was a scene of pleasure,

Such was the resi