A kind and hospitable American family, long resident in Havana, takes us up at last.  They call upon us, and we lift up our heads a little; they take us out in their carriage, and we step in with a little familiar flounce, intended to show that we are used to such things; finally, they invite us to a friendly cup of tea,—­all the hotel knows it,—­we have tarried at home in the shade long enough.  Now, people have begun to find us out,—­we are going out to tea!

How pleasant the tea-table was! how good the tea! how more than good the bread-and-butter and plum-cake! how quaint the house of Spanish construction, all open to the air, adorned with flowers like a temple, fresh and fragrant, and with no weary upholstery to sit heavy on the sight! how genial and prolonged the talk! how reluctant the separation!—­imagine it, ye who sing the songs of home in a strange land.  And ye who cannot imagine, forego the pleasure, for I shall tell you no more about it.  I will not, I, give names, to make good-natured people regret the hospitality they have afforded.  If they have entertained unawares angels and correspondents of the press, (I use the two terms as synonymous,) they shall not be made aware of it by the sacrifice of their domestic privacy.  All celebrated people do this, and that we do it not answers for our obscurity.

The cup of tea proves the precursor of many kind services and pleasant hours.  Our new friends assist us to a deal of sight-seeing, and introduce us to cathedral, college, and garden.  We walk out with them at sunrise and at sunset, and sit under the stately trees, and think it almost strange to be at home with people of our own race and our own way of thinking, so far from the home-surroundings.  For the gardens, they may chiefly be described as triumphs of Nature over Art,—­our New England horticulture being, on the contrary, the triumph of Art over Nature, after a hard-fought battle.  Here, the avenues of palm and cocoa are magnificent, and the flowers new to us, and very brilliant.  But pruning and weeding out are hard tasks for Creole natures, with only negroes to help them.  There is for the most part a great overgrowth and overrunning of the least desirable elements, a general air of slovenliness and unthrift; in all artificial arrangements decay seems imminent, and the want of idea in the laying out of grounds is a striking feature.  In Italian villas, the feeling of the Beautiful, which has produced a race of artists, is everywhere manifest,—­everywhere are beautiful forms and picturesque effects.  Even the ruins of Rome seem to be held together by this fine bond.  No stone dares to drop, no arch to moulder, but with an exquisite and touching grace.  And the weeds, oh! the weeds that hung their little pennon on the Coliseum, how graciously do they float, as if they said,—­“Breathe softly, lest this crumbling vision of the Past go down before the rude touch of the modern world!” And so, one treads lightly, and speaks in hushed accents; lest, in the brilliant Southern noon, one should wake the sleeping heart of Rome to the agony of her slow extinction.