Vermont, near Limerick.—I am delighted with the interesting pictures of real life which appear before “the window” of this room. It is, if I may use the expression, quite a magic lantern of rural feelings—of the pleasures, and pains, the dull and poetic realities of cottage life. And yet not dull—for there always appears to be much of poetry in a mode of existence which is new and strange to our eyes. The realities of life only strike us as dull when we have experienced them ourselves, or when they are brought home to our comprehension, by a similarity to our own circumstances.

A miserable-looking, tattered Irish boy, munching a potatoe, for instance, appears a dull reality to another ragged boy in the same predicament; but to a looker-on in a higher rank of life, he is a picturesque and interesting object. He reminds us of Murillo's beautiful pictures, and his utter destitution affords subject for thought and wonder. Thus the ragged boy excites our imagination, and consequently our poetic feelings, more highly than a pretty girl in our own rank of life, would do, who was well dressed, and sitting in magnificent rooms in the midst of refinement.

In our drive yesterday, I saw a girl standing at the door of a miserable cottage, with a black pan in her hand, filled with some green herb, which appeared like spinnach pounded fine.