The only inhabitant of the enormous mansion was a worn out and pensioned butler; so that my sole companions of the solitude were the deer, and these being never or seldom meddled with, had increased to multitudes; and when one observed the huge and lofty walls with which the whole was shut in, he felt indeed in Rasselas's happy valley.
The subjugation of this part of "New France" made Nova Scotia an English province; and for a time this realm might have answered to the description of Rasselas's Happy Valley; the thrifty, honest people relieved from "wars and rumors of wars", and taking up the quiet, contented routine of every-day life. "Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife They kept the noiseless tenor of their way."
From the valley of Sospello, which appears as completely insulated by nature from the society of the world as Rasselas's happy valley, we wound next morning up another eight miles of ascent as steep and tedious as the last.
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