Presently the murmur of water fell gently upon my ear —­ and in a few moments afterward, as I turned with the road somewhat more abruptly than hitherto, I became aware that a building of some kind lay at the foot of a gentle declivity just before me.  I could see nothing distinctly on account of the mist which occupied all the little valley below.  A gentle breeze, however, now arose, as the sun was about descending; and while I remained standing on the brow of the slope, the fog gradually became dissipated into wreaths, and so floated over the scene.

As it came fully into view —­ thus gradually as I describe it —­ piece by piece, here a tree, there a glimpse of water, and here again the summit of a chimney, I could scarcely help fancying that the whole was one of the ingenious illusions sometimes exhibited under the name of “vanishing pictures.”

By the time, however, that the fog had thoroughly disappeared, the sun had made its way down behind the gentle hills, and thence, as it with a slight chassez to the south, had come again fully into sight, glaring with a purplish lustre through a chasm that entered the valley from the west.  Suddenly, therefore —­ and as if by the hand of magic —­ this whole valley and every thing in it became brilliantly visible.

The first coup d’oeil, as the sun slid into the position described, impressed me very much as I have been impressed, when a boy, by the concluding scene of some well-arranged theatrical spectacle or melodrama.  Not even the monstrosity of color was wanting; for the sunlight came out through the chasm, tinted all orange and purple; while the vivid green of the grass in the valley was reflected more or less upon all objects from the curtain of vapor that still hung overhead, as if loth to take its total departure from a scene so enchantingly beautiful.

The little vale into which I thus peered down from under the fog canopy could not have been more than four hundred yards long; while in breadth it varied from fifty to one hundred and fifty or perhaps two hundred.  It was most narrow at its northern extremity, opening out as it tended southwardly, but with no very precise regularity.  The widest portion was within eighty yards of the southern extreme.  The slopes which encompassed the vale could not fairly be called hills, unless at their northern face.  Here a precipitous ledge of granite arose to a height of some ninety feet; and, as I have mentioned, the valley at this point was not more than fifty feet wide; but as the visiter proceeded southwardly from the cliff, he found on his right hand and on his left, declivities at once less high, less precipitous, and less rocky.  All, in a word, sloped and softened to the south; and yet the whole vale was engirdled by eminences, more or less high, except at two points.  One of these I have already spoken of.  It lay considerably to the north of west, and was where the setting sun made its way, as I have before described,