hearted kindness, and sublime by the great voice of the glorious Ocean.
Gardiner's Island is an appendage to East Hampton, from which it is distant ten miles. It was originally conveyed by deed, in 1639, to Lyon Gardiner, and has since continued, by lineal succession, in that family. It is connected by legendary lore, and buried treasures, with the tragical fortunes of William Kidd, the pirate, who was executed in 1701. It contains between three and four thousand acres of good soil, with a greater proportion of trees than the smaller islands can often boast. There always seems something attractive in insular life, especially with a pleasant summer residence, on a small domain, girdled by the sparkling sea. It would seem as if the world of thought, of nature, and of books, might be more entirely at your own control, and as if the voice of the deep-rolling main insured you against interruptions, or that fear of them, which often produces the same mental hindrance, as their actual occurrence. Still, it would be desirable not to be too far divided from the mainland, or of very difficult access, lest the romance of the locality should be put to flight by positive inconvenience, or a cloistered seclusion.
On the southern shore of Long Island is a bay, from two to five miles in width, formed by sand-beach and islands, and furnishing a remarkable inland navigation of between seventy and eighty miles. Tracts of salt-meadow, producing a luxuriant growth of grass,